Sanguine
by AFiddlingSnail
Summary: They called her lots of things: killer, murderer, criminal, psycho, butcher, cutthroat, and much more, but she didn't care what they called her, didn't care what they shouted and screamed. She helped people, did what needed to be done, did what others were afraid to do. An assassin she may be, but her actions were right. Necessary. She's Ruby Rose, and, deep down, she is good.
1. A Criminal, A Killer, A Girl

Patch was burning, and Ruby Rose was running. Smoke clouded her vision and infested her lungs, screams and roars tore through her ears. Gunfire bounced off the stone walls of the alleyways, some shots punctuated by the howls of Grimm in pain as they met their mark. A roar behind her reminded her of the death she was currently escaping. She was on the west side of town, somewhere by the market based on the smoldering husks of what once appeared to be shops. Only three or four blocks from the outskirts and then...then she was a mile from home.

 _No._ _Can't think about that now, have to get to the outskirts then I'll find a way back home, I've got to._

She poured every ounce of her energy into her short, seven-year-old legs, and was rewarded by a small acceleration as the tiny limbs pumped her minutely faster towards her goal. The dim silver of the stars in the night sky was blocked here and there by gray clouds that flew briskly through the air; black smoke from the fires that raged throughout Patch aided the consuming darkness.

A glaring orange light scorched her vision to the right, followed by a roar that she could _feel_ in her bones. She was somewhat aware that her feet were no longer touching the ground, and then her back smacked against something immovable, sending waves of pain across her body. Her thoughts were disjointed as her eyes blinked in bleary unison.

"Owwww.."

She was on her back, the stars and scars above dancing in and out of focus with the twins that swam beside them. She could hear no sound from her right, and all her left ear heard was a ringing that blared through her mind.

She tilted her head to the right as slow as she could, and her breakfast threatened to force its way up out of her gullet. She managed to push it back down. Barely. The blazing skeleton of a building to her right danced upon her memories, but the ringing in her head destroyed any coherent thoughts she had.

The stench of burning sugar singed her nose, the acrid smell crushing the ringing in her head. _Sweet Watch,_ she realized. It is - a blink - _was_ her favorite sweets store in the market. The Town Watch soldiers ran it when they were off duty, though the baker was always the same. He always gave her a smile, a tussle of hair, and a secret bag of new flavors for her to taste test.

She hoped he was okay.

A cold corner dug into her left bicep, the pain there nagging at her consciousness. With monumental effort she managed to tear her sight away from the roaring orange of the sweets shop and towards her left. Her nose abruptly met something cold, rough, and gray as she did so. _Concrete_. _But how…?_

Her eyes flicked back to Sweet Watch. _Ah._ The force of the blast had thrown her directly against the foundation of the house opposite the store. A squat building made of tan colored brick, and criss-crossed with dark wooden frames.

She'd never realized how pretty the look was before, it was no red and black obviously, but still, it was acceptable.

A confused growl from behind her caused her head to snap backwards. Something she instantly regretted as her breakfast reappeared on the street with a stinky vengeance. She retched and hacked, her throat on fire as her eyes watered. The last of the vomit dangled in strands of chunky spittle from her mouth.

Another growl, and this time, seeing as her breakfast was on the sidewalk, the only consequence of her head snapping to the source was the wave of dizziness.

An ivory mask coated in red trim and bright white claws were the most visible parts of the Beowulf that kneeled in the flickering shadows of the inferno. Its black form shifted indecisively between visible and obscure, the latter solely allowed by the orange inferno of the sweets shop next to it. But there was something wrong. Where there should be two burning red eyes there was only darkness and the dribbling of smoky pitch down the mask. The beast hadn't heard her vomit either. She blinked.

 _It's blind and deaf,_ she realized with a sigh. The pressure of the blast wave must've popped the beowulf's eyes and eardrums, leaving it only its senses of touch and smell to navigate. _Explains why it hasn't charged me yet._ She smirked, and the world around her tilted and swirled.

In a way, Yang had saved her. If it hadn't been for that trip into the woods where they'd both almost died, her father would've waited another year to unlock her aura. As it stood, her aura, while at a child's level, still saved her life. _But not my ear,_ she thought with a frown, right hand moving shakily to touch the trickle of warm liquid that ran down her right cheek. It came away stained red.

Ruby's head was pounding, but her vision had stopped swimming. With a groan she managed to bring her arms below her and push herself to her knees, the ground swimming beneath her before she clenched her eyes shut. One leg at a time straightened out, and soon she found herself standing straight up. But not without help.

 _You're a good wall._ A few pats with the left arm that pressed against it for support. _A_ very _good wall._

She turned her head towards the Grimm that scrabbled uselessly at its now empty eye sockets. _And you are a_ very _bad Grimm, Mr. Beowulf._

She had just turned around, her body facing down the street that led out of town when a thought stopped her. It was an afterthought really, a passing mourning for Sweet Watch, but it made her stop dead in her tracks from realization.

Sweet Watch, her favorite sweets store, was run by the town watch. Therefore it was immediately beside, even linked to, the Patch Third Armory.

Where every gram of military-grade dust in Patch was kept.

Ruby began to panic. She staggered forward, glancing over her shoulder every third step to check on the progress of Sweet Watch's inferno. It licked at the steel reinforced walls of the armory angrily, growling for the fuel locked within.

She wasn't sure how much was left, but considering the fact that Patch had fallen in only a few hours she bet it was a lot.

"Drat, drat, drat," she cursed under her breath as she made her way shakily down the next block. Progress was painfully slow, especially compared to how fast she was used to going with her semblance, but, with how her muscles and legs groaned and how the world still seemed to tilt just a little, that was no surprise.

The fire of Sweet Watch was about five-hundred feet behind her, but she still didn't think that was enough. The flames had begun to superheat the outside of the steel walls, turning the inside of the building into an absolute furnace.

She wasn't going to make it to the tree line in time.

Red-tipped hair bounced on her head as it snapped left and right scanning for something, anything that would get her out of this situation alive. _Need to see Yang and Dad again, need to see Yang and Dad again._

Her eyes locked on a house painted an alabaster white. The perfect coat of ivory would glow orange and purple as it reflected the light of the setting and rising sun, and during the day it would blossom into a soft yellow as the midday sun bounced off it. During festivals, when the denizens of Patch strung up lights and lanterns through the streets, the house would be like a rainbow; the borders of the colors indistinct and blurred as they reflected off, but beautiful all the same. It was the Welkins' house. An old man and an old woman, Ruby made sure to always stop by whenever she could on her trips to and from the market square, ask them about their day, and compliment them on their impeccably painted house. They'd always smile, and if she really laid it on thick, or they were feeling particularly generous, they'd give her a cookie.

This time the sinister, orange glow of the Welkins' house was anything but comforting. The front door of the house was shattered, bits of oak clinging to broken hinges while chunks lay embedded in the wall.

 _The bunker._

The thought was at the forefront of her mind as her scanning ceased. The Welkins were a particularly paranoid couple, even for people who lived outside the Cities. When they weren't fawning over her, they were ranting about Doomsday scenarios: when the Grimm would finally raze Vale, when Atlas and Vacuo would finally get fed up and duke it out, sucking the rest of Remnant into their conflict in the process. Endless pessimistic rants, but Ruby never called them crazy or made fun of them, unlike some other denizens of Patch. Mrs. Welkin also made really _really_ good cookies; those jerks didn't know what they were missing.

It was because of this, maaaaaybe incentivized kindness, that Mr. Welkin had pulled her aside one day and told her that her family was welcome in their bunker when 'the Grimm came and killed us all.' He'd even told her the location of the key in case 'the worst happened,': in the cookie jar in the kitchen.

Ruby didn't have the heart to tell him that her family, save for herself and Yang, were all veteran huntsman and huntresses, and that, if a doomsday event like that ever occurred, they'd probably be fighting until everyone was safe or they themselves were dead. Like heroes do.

But, well, it looks like the Welkins had been right.

Ruby pushed herself as hard as she could, her short legs alight with protest and pain that howled with each step. She had just crested the last step and stumbled through the open doorway when she saw them.

Mister and Missus Welkin were very much dead. Mr. Welkin had a gaping hole in the middle of his chest where a claw must've pierced it; he lay face down in his own blood, his arm outstretched towards the corpse of his wife that lay spread in three minced strips towards the door to their room.

"No…" She whispered, her voice seeming to tear through the oppressive silence that managed to pervade the house despite the chaos outside. Tears welled in her eyes, and dripped haphazardly from her face before splashing into the pool of blood surrounding her feet.

Tiny fists quivered violently with pent up emotion, and her arms themselves were rigid with grief. She stayed like that for a whole minute, just staring at the remains of the people she only slightly knew, but still mourned. A shaking howl echoed from down the street, riving through her mind and forcing her from her stupor. Hurried steps through the blood coated her boots in crimson as she moved towards the kitchen, leaving bloody tracks over the usually spotless hardwood floor.

She could hear scrabbling and scratching and growling from closer down the street as the Beowulf neared her. She knew she couldn't afford to panic, knew the Grimm would sense it and, combined with her mourning, would drive it into a frenzy. But she was a child, and she couldn't help it.

Her breath came ever quicker and her whole body was shaking with adrenaline as she barreled into the kitchen, heading for the familiar, bright white cookie jar nestled into the corner of the kitchen counter and fridge. She flipped the thing over in her panic, shaking out every cookie and only having part of her heart break alongside every delicate sweet that shattered on the counter.

"Come on, come on, come oooon."

 _Tink._

The bright steel key, her salvation, clanked softly against the green countertop and she couldn't help but squee. The teeth of the thing bit into her skin as she scooped it up, her feet stumbling slightly as she did.

The bunker entrance was in the living room hidden under a bright pink rug intricately decorated with adorable renditions of the Creatures of Grimm. ' _You and yours are always welcome, ya hear?'_

Rubber soles pounded a panicked beat as she sprinted into the living room; on her right was a doorway that led to the main hallway of the house, all the way to the shattered remnants of the front door. On her left was the beautiful wood and paper sliding door that led out to the backyard.

She couldn't stop the grin that spread wildly across her face as she threw the rug off the heavy steel portal that heralded her sanctuary. Clammy hands jittered with the padlock on the two heavy handles of the half-doors. She had it gripped in one hand while the other shook violently as the spear missed the keyhole again and again, cutting into her hand with each attempt.

Finally, the key slid into a padlock with a resounding click, and she snapped her hand to the right to unlock the thing. The top arch popped out of the lock with a clunk and pale hands scrambled to get the hook off the handles so she could just _get it open_.

The lock had just cleared the handle and her spirits had just begun to soar when a howl and tremendous crash signalled the Beowulf's arrival. The thing came careening through the shattered door frame at top speed, slamming into and through the drywall with a grunt and a crack as it stumbled back in a daze. It took a wild swing at the wall as its foot met Mr. Welkin's skull with a sickening crunch.

The thing didn't hear it, but it _felt_ it. It felt her fear. An ivory mask and empty eye sockets dripping with smoky black liquid turned slowly towards the source. The holes found her eyes, boring through her skull as the emptiness pinned her to the spot. Its mouth clicked, rolling hills of serrated bone dripping with blood and bits of flesh. Muscles coated in black fur and bone rolled like tsunamis as it shifted and stormed down the hallway.

 _Oh truck._

Ruby's hands gripped the left door handle and her whole body stiffened as she yanked on it with every ounce of strength she had.

"Freakin'...open!" She pleaded as her whole body strained and shook. The metal yielded ever so slightly, and she could see a tiny sliver of shadow that the interior was cloaked in.

The Beowulf was halfway down the hall, its nose and ears twitching madly while its maw spewed spittle as it bounded towards her. The smoking sockets were locked on her, and it seemed to almost smile.

The Beowulf's feet pounded upon the hardwood floor, leaving webs of cracks across the polished surface with each step. The door opened a little more. The Beowulf was ten feet from the living room, but the door was just barely three inches open.

For a fraction of a second Ruby was tempted to give up, to let the door drop and let the Beowulf consume her. Her grip slackened ever so slightly and her eyes slipped closed. The pounding of the Grimm, the roaring of the fire, the cracking of distant gunshots, and the screams of far away deaths all fading to a low pitched droning that she pushed to the back of her mind.

A voice echoed through her thoughts, an impossible voice, a voice that filled her with warmth.

"Don't you worry, Little Rose, you'll be a hero someday. You were born to be one"

Silver eyes shot open, glinting like pools of molten steel in the flickering orange glow.

 _No. No, I_ won't _die like this._

Ruby Rose roared a tiny, squeaky roar and pulled with every fiber of her being, her dwindling aura augmenting her small arms and shoulders unconsciously as she pulled.

With a cry of rusted hinges the steel gave, its inertia finally overcome. It seemed to open in slow motion, the dull silver of the moon sparkling on the corners. Her eyes shot back to the source of the house's personal earthquake.

The Beowulf's clawed feet had just torn into the strips of Mrs. Welkin, her blood flying across the air in glistening droplets. Ruby dove into the darkness below.

Her right shoulder smashed against a hard surface she could not see. She could hear the door slam against its hinges as its momentum did a one-eighty and smashed it back down to its original resting place, severing the menial moonlight and shrouding her in total blackness.

The triumphant howl of the Beowulf was followed not ten seconds later by the grating of claws across steel.

Silence.

A beastial howl of pure frustration and rage was muffled by the thick steel of the door. Grinding swipe after grinding swipe raked uselessly across the reinforced metal, and yielded no results. Luckily, the Beowulf couldn't see that.

Ruby's hands moved to her skirt pocket and grasped her scroll. Her arms and legs shook with leftover adrenaline that still coursed through her system, shaking the tiny device like a breeze shook a leaf in Fall. She pulled the scroll open and browsed through her contacts as fast as she could with her shivering fingers before they rested on a single name: Dad.

Her finger pressed glass.

The gentle ringing tone bounced off the unseen concrete walls of the bunker, contested only by the still unsteady sounds of her breath and the sharp scraping of claws on steel.

A blond man with piercing blue eyes and stubble clinging to his chin filled her screen. His face was a study in how to mask almost all consuming panic, but the second the call connected and he saw her face lit by the light of her scroll a relieved smile erupted from his mouth.

"Ruby! Oh thank Dust you're alive. Where are you? Are you hurt? Are there Grimm nearby? What types are they? What's your Aura level? Wha-"

"Dad, is that Ruby?! Is she okay?!" A familiar female voice screamed from off screen.

Ruby couldn't stop her smile, "I'm okay, Yang, maybe deaf in my right ear, but okay."

"What?!" Two blondes shouted in unison, accompanied by another mess of golden hair that barged into the screen, the lilac eyes that accompanied them flashing crimson.

Her smile turned sheepish and she began to mutter. "I, uh, well I-I may have been too close to Sweet Watch when it sort of kinda _maybe_ went boom." One hand scratched the back of her head, digging through the red-black cover of hair and down to her scalp.

Crimson eyes switched back to lilac while sapphire ones filled with concern.

"Ruby," Taiyang spoke, his voice stern and calm, "where are you?"

"The Welkin's bunker," an immense sigh of relief came from her family, a flicker of pride flashing across her face as she listened to the Grimm scrape uselessly against the steel. "There's a Beowulf clawing at the door, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything. It's blind and deaf from Sweet Watch too, I think." A pause as she remembered those smoking sockets. Shivers crept up her spine. "Where are you guys? That doesn't look like home."

The very little of the backdrop that wasn't covered by the wall of blond hair was a steel color; wires encased in thick black rubber crossed the ceiling in organized lines, matched by pipes that she could barely see.

"We're on _The Axe_ , an air-carrier that came to help with evacuation, but that's not important. Ruby, you need to _stay there_." Taiyang's voice was soft but stern, and allowed for no argument, "I'll come and get you, I just need a bullhead to drop me off and I'll be there, but I _need_ you to wait. Can you do that for me?"

She nodded, her short hair bouncing to cover her eyes for a second as it moved with the sudden motion. "Yeah, yeah I can."

"Don't worry, sweetie, I'll be there before you know it, promise. Okay, Yang can you-"

The screen went half black as a hand covered the camera; a moment later her sister's broad smile filled the screen. "Don't worry, Dad, I'll keep Ruby company."

"Alright," her father's voice came from somewhere off screen, "I love you both, and I'll be right there, Ruby; just hold tight."

The metallic and static-y footfalls of her dad as he made his way down a hallway that she couldn't see reverberated through through the speaker and around the bunker. Yang was talking non-stop, but Ruby wasn't really listening. Her heels bounced her form up and down in excitement as a grin of monstrous proportions split her face. Her dad was coming for her, and he'd kill any Grimm in his way, no sweat. All she had to do was sit here and wait; thank _Dust_ she didn't have to sit still. She was going to be okay.

"Don't worry, Rubes, dad's gonna be there before you know it, and he's gonna kick so much Grimm butt that we can move back home tonight and then have some awesome stew," a pause as the blond gasped for air. "I promise."

It was then that things started to go wrong.

Yang's voice, which she hadn't been paying much attention to, began to break up. The video on her screen froze, going from still photo to still photo, each one showing a blond girl with ever growing concern.

"Yang? Yang, what's happening? You're freez-"

A thundering vibration shook the bunker and every bone in her body. The whole room seemed to turn to liquid beneath her feet, throwing her to the ground as it did.

The scroll slipped from her hands, forgotten in her body's instinctual move to protect her head as it pitched towards the floor way _way_ too fast. Skin made contact with the quaking ground just as the scroll did. It landed screen down and skidded across the floor to a corner on her left.

She scrabbled across the shaking floor; she _had_ to get back to her scroll. The dim yellow light provided by Yang's hair illuminated a shelf that went all the way to the roof of the bunker, stocked high with can after can of food. One in particular, a can of dried Pumpkin Pete's Oatmeal, teetered ominously before falling off the shelf.

The can's fall seemed to last for a whole minute, the smiling bunny mocking her as it plunged towards the one and only lifeline she had to her family. She tried as hard as she could, tried to dig deep down into some unknown reserve of energy to power up her semblance, but she couldn't. She could only lay there and watch as the smiling and jolly face of Pete smashed into the screen of her scroll and plunged the room back into darkness.

Her hands scraped desperately against the concrete as she crawled closer to where her scroll had fallen. The ground seemed to solidify as she did, and soon she found herself on her feet and running, though with how tired she was it was more of a slow jog.

Her foot clanged against something hard as she ran in the pitch black. For the second time in thirty seconds she found herself falling forward, but her hands only met more cans when they needed ground.

She brought her forearm to bear in front of her face at the last second; it slammed into the concrete, and her head slammed into her arm.

"Ow," she mumbled, her voice muffled by the sleeve enveloping her mouth. She pushed herself up to her feet once more. _Okay, walk slowly._ Every footfall was delicate from here as she fought to exercise restraint with every step. Whenever she felt something hard that rolled beneath her foot she would kick it softly aside and out of her path. It continued like this for way _way_ too long, and frustration began to boil beneath every thought. When her hand finally felt along the wall and found the corner she'd been searching for she nearly squeaked in relief, her mind and body jittery and impatient as they were.

She bent down and slid her hand across the floor, feeling for any sign of her scroll. The concrete was coarse and dry against her skin, but not painfully so. After thirty seconds of nothing she found her objective.

Well, _half_ , of her objective.

She gripped the bottom piece of the scroll in her hand, her thumb absentmindedly pressing the golden button at the base over and over again.

 _Truck._

She pouted in frustration and kicked the nearest can, hoping that it was the _evil_ Pumpkin Pete's Oatmeal that shattered her connection with her family. Faster than last time, she made her way back to what she thought would be the center of the bunker and dropped to her knees before collapsing backwards onto her back with a soft thud. She sighed.

 _This isn't the end of the world. Dad knows where I am and he promised he would be here soon, all I have to do is stay here._ Another sigh. _Okay, could definitely be better there. But at least the scratching's stopped._ Wait.

Ruby sat up, her good ear cocked upwards at where she thought the doors would be. Nothing. _Huh._ She made her way around the blackness, hand trailing along behind her body as she felt for a ladder or sudden emptiness that indicated a staircase. It didn't take long given that her memory still functioned soundly. Her hand wrapped around the thick metal rung as the other searched for the one above it, and her feet kicked and felt for the ones below.

 _Technically_ , -she grabbed a rung- _I'm not leaving the bunker -_ another grab and another step upwards- _just investigating the doors_ -she was only a foot away from the hatch now- _no way that dad'll mind._

One tiny hand shot forth from her body and met the cold steel of the hatch. With all that she had left she pushed.

Nothing.

 _Well, it was_ really _heavy._

She pressed her back against the wall for support, and placed her other hand on the same door. Again she pushed, and again nothing happened.

"Stupid," a grunt, "dumb," a shove, " _butthead_ door!"

She gave the tiniest of growls at the door. It wasn't afraid of her.

Sighing, she climbed back down the ladder before plopping her butt down on the rough concrete floor. Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness but it was still just so _thick_. There wasn't even the tiniest of lights slipping through the bunker doors anymore. There was only the dark.

 _Power. I need to find the power. Power leads to light and light means no more dark._

She nodded, a contented smile spreading across her pale face.

"Alright, Mr. Generator, wheeeree are you?"

* * *

Ruby Rose woke with a start. Above her, chipping red paint revealed rusted steel in a starburst pattern while a tiny yawn bounced through the cold air of her favorite cargo container. The soft pitter patter of light raindrops on thin, corrugated, and rusted metal played softly overhead. A grimace stretched out across her soft features.

 _Stupid dream. Stupid dumb_ useless _dream._ She shook her head, red tips playing into her peripherals as her hair bounced around. She didn't need that dream today of all days, but that's how her luck had always seemed to be.

Nothing was ever easy for Ruby Rose.

 _But that's fine,_ she thought, throwing off her ratty and ragtag excuse for a blanket. _That's how I like it._

Her joints popped and groaned in relief as she moved her body once again. She always did hate staying still for long. _Sleep's a good exception though._ She tore off the threadbare hoodie that formed her pajama top and threw it to her left where it landed with a soft plop on the container floor. It sat in blissful solitude for one glorious second before the hole-filled sweatpants that were two feet too long piled on top with equal disregard.

Ruby scanned the three hooks and corner pile that held her wardrobe. She picked her favorite, and only, sports bra and slipped it on, followed in short order by underwear.

 _Need something that blends in. Something unsuspicious. Innocent. Until I get to the overlook, of course._ Silver eyes glistened over the clothes like spotlights. _Thoooooouuuugh,_ she hummed, _the street rat look always gets ignored._ A smile tugged at the edges of her lips. _Also the most honest look for me. Street rat it is._

She hummed her favorite song, the only one she could remember from while Patch was still standing. It was fast and intense, with electric chords and crashing drums, filling her mind with energy as she let it overwhelm her thoughts. Her hum may not have been able to replicate the whole song, but it served as a good base to get lost in.

She grabbed her threadbare hoodie and slipped it on, small hands reaching halfway down the forearm area before coming to an abrupt stop. A series of intermittent thuds on the steel floor and her determined grunting signalled her literal hopping into her torn and mangled jeans.

Ruby looked down. The once gray hoodie was now dyed more with stains than it ever had been with true color. Holes spotted the chest and a tear ran the length of the right side of the hood. Her jeans, which were two sizes too big and four inches too long, were ragged in every meaning of the word. Holes, tears, worn down threads, and a hundred different stains littered the denim that hung loosely around her lower body. On her feet was her favorite pair of black boots; their laces were frayed and cut, the holes for the laces had turned more into ruptures, and the soles were so worn down that they may as well have been smooth. She loved them.

Her humming, though now through a smile, continued as she walked with a pep in her step towards her favorite corner in her whole house, apartment, container, _thing_. Nestled gingerly behind her only curtain was her combat gear. She'd seen it a thousand times, but she still couldn't help but squeal: comfortably loose black pants with pockets and pouches lining the thighs, a black long-sleeved workout shirt with a high neck, and a thick red leather jacket with black trim complete with over ten pockets, padded elbows and shoulders, _and_ it actually _fit_ her! There were other accessories that she'd picked up in her travels too that managed to fit her style: a black winter hat-and-mask combination that she'd picked up off a bandit that appeared to be Atlesian, an old pair of ski goggles with a reflective red visor she'd found in the ruins of Patch, some black combat gloves with "super-grip" palms and armored knuckles, and, of course, her torn and fraying red cloak and hood combo.

She picked up every object with the care of a mother handling their child before gently placing them inside her worn green rucksack, positively beaming as she did. And, gradually, she revealed what lay behind them: her pride and joy. One object, midnight black in color with red stripes, appeared to be nothing more than a rather bulky rectangle. The other looked a bit more dangerous, even in its storage form: an immaculately polished and gleaming steel blade longer than her arm lay folded and sheathed atop a series of compacted, red and grey steel rods of equal length.

Ruby Rose shook with delight as she picked up the weapons with the utmost care and placed them softly atop the rest of her gear. She took a second, or fifteen, to admire her collection before zipping the bag closed, sealing her gear in darkness. With practiced ease she swung the thing over her shoulder and onto her back, looping her left arm through the remaining strap.

She practically skipped outside her container and onto the docks she was so happy.

Early evening light shone onto the docks, the rusted and dull containers eagerly slurping up every single ray, refusing to reflect it back into the world. Dilapidated and abandoned warehouses, rotting wooden posts, shattered streetlights, and broken and rusted safety chains lined the depressing mix of noxious green and emotionless gray that made up the seawall. Her footsteps were a combination of squishes through seaside muck or a soft thud unnoticeable above the endless din of inter-kingdom commerce. The repugnant scent of salt, dead fish, machine lubrication, and the inherent _greasiness_ of the slums attacked her nostrils with renewed fury as the wind picked up.

Vale wasn't her favorite place, that's for sure, but it was where she could do the most good, help the most people. _Cookies would help the smell a lot,_ she thought, blowing a rebellious strand of hair back into line with a targeted breath. _Cookies would help everything a lot._

The stench died somewhat as she neared the Old Weyerhauser Bridge that linked the southern industrial district to the northern quarter. A graceless amalgamation of iron and cobblestone mixed with neon dust coils; to most it was hideous, to Ruby though, it just needed a few touch ups, mostly of the _red_ variety.

The Northeastern Industrial District was a lot less...shipping focused than the rest. Here massive smokestacks dominated the skyline, thrusting upwards as they belched interminable plumes of smog into the sky. The coarse static of the sea was replaced, quite abruptly, by the overwhelming tidal wave of sound formed by the endless crashing and clanking of dust powered machines.

The factories here were either almost completely autonomous, or manned almost exclusively by Faunus laborers. With the night shift having just begun the streets were mostly empty with only scattered pockets of stray animals digging through the muck or, probably corrupt, police officers loitering in idling patrol cars.

In general, her trudges through any area of the Industrial District were uneventful. The inhabitants were accustomed to seeing the poverty she embodied, and therefore pretty good at shrugging it off and ignoring her. Though it made it worse that she was a human in a mostly Faunus district; she'd never been attacked before, but she'd definitely never been comfortable. She could feel the baleful gaze of Faunus wherever she roamed here.

"Evening, Ruby." _But there are always others._ She smiled.

"Hey, Twig, how's the booze tonight?" she said with an easy wave to her right as her body continued forward.

The old man's face was streaked with grease and dirt, his worker's uniform in much the same state, but with a few extra hasty stitches here and there to fix holes and burns. The small of his back rested greedily against the wall, thin legs spread out before him on the crumbling fire escape. A cloudy brown bottle rose shakily to his lips every six seconds, followed by another two of swallowing. A sigh slipped from his lips as soon as the bottle moved away, accompanied with a small twitch of his white dog ears.

"Shit, as always." He glared at the murky brownness before his eyes began roaming over the gray blanket the smog had laid over the vibrant, late evening sky. "So it's just like the rest of this damn district in this damn city."

His blue eyes, blurry and bloodshot from the haze of alcohol combined with smog, inched back to her unwashed form. "Don't go gettin' yourself into trouble tonight. Fang are on the prowl after one of us was killed for 'resisting arrest'; take any excuse they can to get their hands on a human for 'training.' 'Specially a one-off like you."

 _They won't see me, Twig. Promise._ "Stay outta trouble tonight, got it." _Never said I'd_ do _it, just that I got it._ Her body slipped into the dark embrace of a side alley as she rounded the corner, equally black boots carefully avoiding broken glass, needles, and stagnant pools of sludge.

Shadows spun and whirled across the muddied walls of the alleyway, a forest of strings laden with rustling cotton birthing and killing dancers on the whim of the wind. Puny shards and whole bottles alike acted as chandelier crystals in a ballroom, scattering and reflecting the orange rays in a mesmerizing kaleidoscope. Used needles sang with illumination as they too joined in the last and most spectacular celebration of another day. Her eyes locked onto the ledge of the tenement rooftop, and, in a finale fit for the Amity Coliseum, she moved. A forest of wet cotton clapped as it was buffeted aside, birthing a thousand new dancers that frolicked to her scattering tune. The crystals that had been near her bounced and flew, bursting to tell their neighbors of what beauty they had seen as they screamed and splashed in awe. The needles played a brilliant crescendo of red, burning with passion and life for a brief second before her tune reached the candle that illuminated it all. And then the alley was quiet, lambent petals that spiralled gently to the ground the only evidence of her presence.

The puddle ridden roof grunted in surprise as Ruby suddenly appeared kneeling atop it. Silver eyes shot up, scanning the rooftop for any signs of unwelcome inhabitants. Seeing nothing obvious, Ruby rose with a self-satisfied grin before jogging over to the decayed block of steel that must once have been the tenement climate control.

Her body hugged the orange sides as she did one last examination of the rooftop from the perimeter of the steel behemoth.

Her body relaxed. _Alone._

With careful precision she lowered her rucksack off her shoulders and onto the grimy embrace of the roof. Tiny hands moved with ease through the cramped bag, unpacking everything as fast as the eye could see. With equal speed she undressed, haphazardly tossing the pants and hoodie into the gaping maw of the rucksack before she turned to her neatly folded combat gear. She donned it all in under thirty seconds, the fastening of her cloak around her neck marking the end of her mental stopwatch.

She frowned. _Still not faster than my record._ Gloved hands closed the rucksack and nestled it under an old duct linked to the central unit. _Oh well, I can practice when I get home. But nooooow,_ she turned to face the Northern edge of the roof, torn and tattered cloak fluttering softly in the night air. Two hands reached upwards to her masked face, adjusting her goggles slightly as she did.

The city of Vale burned a vicious red in the reflection of her visor.

 _It's time to help._

* * *

 **A/N: Hello all, and welcome to** _Sanguine_ **! This story will primarily feature Ruby in a canon-divergent little AU-ish type deal of mine. I'm hesitant to reveal too much at the moment, but I do think that y'all will enjoy this one! I know I certainly enjoy writing it.**

 **As for updates, well, I have four chapters written at the moment, totalling 20,000 or so words. That said, I won't be updating weekly until I run out of pre-written content like I did for** _The Ivory Champion._ **Instead, I'll post a chapter whenever I finish writing the most recent one, that way, should I not be able to write for a while, I have a small buffer of pre-written material to post.**

 **A word about chapter length:** _Sanguine_ **chapters will generally be longer than** _The Ivory Champion_ **chapters, but to what degree sort of varies. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, and sometimes even. Just a little heads up.**

 **The only thing I'm a little iffy about is Ruby's combat clothes design, let me know what you guys think of them, I can change them or improve them/other stuff.**

 **Let me know what you guys think of this chapter/concept, I'll take any and all criticism/feedback you guys give me. It's all useful somehow, so don't be afraid to just write about a phrase or sentence you liked or hated, or maybe a little speck of irony here or there, something like that.**

 **That's all for today, folks! Have a good one, and stay safe out there!**

 **4/20/2017 editing notes: Went through the first part of this chapter (up to when Ruby wakes up) and rewrote/fixed a lot of weirdly worded and incorrect stuff. I think it reads better, but that could be just me.**


	2. Night's End

The wind laughed in delight as she split it, leaping and sprinting across rooftops as her hidden smile dominated her face. This was her favorite part. Her body was a blur of black and gleaming red on the radiant silver background of the shattered moon. Her cloak whipped and snapped in the gale, a living trail of red that billowed behind her.

The monstrous mechanical bellowing from the factories grew ever dimmer as she approached her target area, fading to just above background noise as the gentle hum of the nighttime Commercial District replaced it.

During the day the district was positively _alive_. Designated marketplaces overflowing with the shouts of hawkers and the bustling of patrons, the plazas full to bursting with humanity. Storefront doors never seemed to close, the endless chiming of entrance bells and welcoming shopkeepers contesting with the metallic growl of engines as cars meandered through. If the Northeastern Upper Class District (NEUCD for short) was the brain of the city, then the Commercial District was the ever beating heart, drawing every lien-cell to it before circulating the stuff around the city. Ruby grinned behind her mask, _prime begging location._

However at night, while the heart still beat, it slowed its breakneck pace to a lazy - and usually illegal - plod. All around the district noise and life faded into the evening, and where it didn't the skull pounding musical throb of clubs and bars erupted alongside their patrons stomachs. The border with the Industrial District was different than the rest though: the giddy chatter of law abiding citizens was ousted by the muted and careful innuendo of crime, punctuated every now and then by the rushed curses and gunshots that indicated a deal gone wrong. It was rougher at night along The Border, as Valeans had come to call it, than anywhere else in the city save for the Industrial District itself. And that roughness was the reason she was here.

A face flashed in her mind as she ceased her movement and began overwatch from her perch atop a marble cornerstone. The face was slimy, coated in pockmarks and acne scars that were only outnumbered by the flopping clumps of greasy black hair in front of bulging brown eyes. The thin mouth was twisted in a permanently cruel smile with squares of blackness that indicated missing teeth. A milky white scar ran lengthwise across his chin before slipping up across his left cheek. _Nix._ The man was a monster, one that dealt in diluted fireblood, electric mind, and all other sorts of dust-drug mixes. Not even mentioning the straight amphetamines and pills. Exclusively dealing in extremely expensive and addictive substances, he had a habit of selling to children, human traffickers to keep their 'goods' under control, and even some high ranking and less-than-pure city officials. He ran one of the biggest dust-drug, or 'crystal', cartels in the city and was a serial rapist to boot. White teeth behind black cloth were covered by lips pressed into a thin line of distaste as Ruby mentally went over her target's deeds.

She'd be helping Vale a lot tonight.

The stark white marble of the roof around her bent into red as she launched herself across the street and onto the roof opposite her. A spiralling crimson missile bloomed into existence before fading just as fast, leaving only a swirling wake of petals that drifted to the street below.

 _Next left then across the dust shop and at the very top of the tower._ She knew the directions by heart now after all the reconnaissance she'd done on the facility. Not that a three story townhome with a luxury tower nestled on top was hard to find, but it paid to be prepared. With the wind's applause she shot forth to the last rooftop: it was well-maintained for a roof, with only a few recent, and, by her standards, gleaming puddles mixed with barely tarnished climate control units. Old rubber soles plodded along to the Eastern corner of the rooftop where she kneeled, worn synthetic cloth meeting the coarse cement of the roof. _Really need to get some kneepads,_ she thought as her right hand flew to the small of her back and retrieved the treasured rectangle that waited there.

A small hand clad entirely in black caressed the red-striped steel she held in her hands. She couldn't feel it, but, then again, she didn't need to; she'd memorized every ridge, every line, every scar. She knew it better than she knew her own body, she'd built it after all. She smiled despite herself, despite the morbidity of the weapon's implications; every muscle in her body relaxed as she brought the extension of herself to bear. Her thumb flicked against a tiny black switch, and her joy blossomed like the steel in her hands.

The rectangle split into three parts that each individually clanked and hissed in relief as they stretched into the stock, barrel, and receiver. Her left hand had already slipped to one of her thigh pockets, flipping it open and retrieving a high caliber dust cartridge before ramming it home at the exact moment the rifle was done transforming, a move born of years of practice.

A flame of pride ignited in her heart as she held her own little work of art in her hands. Maybe it was a little boxy to be a sniper rifle, maybe the barrel was a little too long, and maybe, just maybe, she'd gone a little overkill on the caliber, but she loved it. She loved it as much as she loved her cloak.

 _Alright,_ her left hand flashed forward and snapped the bladed bipod into the roof, _let's do this._

The building in her sights was four hundred feet away and painted a delicate orange with black trim. The windows were high and arching, and each framed a different scene. Here a room housing exclusively exotic pets, there a bustling and smoke filled kitchen that spewed delicacies like it was going out of style. Through one she spotted a group of men and women in bright orange vests and glasses playing a game of cards, one woman slammed her hand to the table before launching herself at the man across from her in a frenzy of tearing cloth; the rest just coughed and carried on. Only one window was shrouded: the one directly opposite her in the middle of the tower, but it would open soon.

She waited. She hummed her favorite song. and waited some more.

For three hours she lay there, her humming muffled by the thick cloth of her mask. Silver eyes flashed behind the scope as she scanned the warm night lights of Northern Vale. Cars drove by beneath her at ever decreasing intervals and ever increasing speeds as the blackness of night invited all sorts of types out to play. She double, triple, and quadruple checked her baby, making sure not a single drop of oil or shred of metal was out of place. Her fingers idly tapped a delicate beat that her head nodded along to, but her sights remained perfectly on target. The broken moon hid behind banks of never ending clouds, peeking out randomly to evaluate her progress before returning to its fluffy blanket.

The brisk wind assaulted her face in a useless effort to chill her, and she checked to make sure her scythe was still slung across her back for the fifteenth time. _Come on, come on, come on, don't change it up tonight of all nights._ Her finger drummed nervously on the side of her baby, matching the hammering of her heart that filled her head.

"Come on," she muttered, the words lost in the cotton of her mouth and the hum of the city around her.

And then, with the unrestrained frustration that only someone trying to figure out wonky blinds knows, the curtain was ripped to the side and the once inky blackness of the window was replaced with a glowing room she'd all but memorized.

Her crosshairs moved instinctively, lithe and practiced fingers barely making her scope so much as shake. They hovered over her target, and her finger pulled the trigger.

Her baby bucked in her arms as it delivered three gravity-dust-augmented FMJ rounds towards her target. The breaking of the glass mixed with the bark of her third round, and then they struck home.

The first round collided with the top of Nix's head, sending it snapping back into the bookshelf behind his desk. The second and third rounds seized the opening and smacked hard into the exposed flesh of his neck, cutting off the man's yell before it had begun. Silver eyes glistened behind the emotionless red visor that was pressed against her scope. They hardened as the man barely recovered mid-fall, and the round that was supposed to have elicited the eruption of red mist from his throat was deflected by his aura. _Oh no you don't._ She grunted and stood, her baby barking in her arms as she continued to fire; holes burst into existence as the man's desk withered and splintered under her relentless fire, but no telltale eruption of red stained the bookcase.

"Damn," she breathed, laying her rifle down behind the lip of the roof as one hand shot up and unbuckled the sling that held her scythe in place. It hadn't even had time to fully form before she rocketed forward.

Everything around her faded to shades of red streaked with black lines. Everything except for the window and desk that were in her path. She held her still morphing scythe behind her, the familiar clanking of steel absorbed and disregarded by her mind.

A spiralling red missile of pure death shattered what was left of the window, tiny shards of glass reflecting her cardinal in an infinite fractal as they impaled themselves in the walls. Rose petals burst into being behind it, funnelling into the room with the gale of wind that followed her, scattering the glistening heralds across every surface as the distance between her and the desk evaporated. Her scythe, merely a red and silver blur behind the missile, suddenly came into focus as it flourished into being above her, slicing through the desk with the ease provided by obsessively sharpened, dust-augmented steel combined with blinding speed.

A second after the wood splintered an explosion of pure sound echoed through the room, further stunning the already shocked figure that had crouched behind the once marvelous piece of wood. His hands, one holding a worn and gold-plated revolver, shot instinctively up to his ears, eyes closing as wind overwhelmed them.

Her blade sang with joy as it met the neck of her target in a swipe that shattered his remaining aura, filling the air with a soft crack as the orange glow around him withered away.

She twisted her hands, sending the steel of her blade down into the wood of the floor with a crack. Splinters filled the air, tiny shards that bounced off her coat and aura, but pierced Nix like a thousand bees. He screamed in pain before her boot found his face, and something broke with a wet snap.

The floor released her scythe with a resigned groan, the singing blade eager to fulfill its design as she hefted it in both hands. She channeled her aura into her arms and swung.

Her target had just removed his hands from his twisted nose when the blade made contact with his neck, and the monster named Nix ceased to be.

She observed the head with practiced impassiveness as it thunked to the floor, the face still locked in a grotesque mask of pain and surprise. She turned, her crimson cloak flourishing behind her as petals streamed and flung themselves around her, accentuating the movement and turning her into something almost otherworldly.

The once magnificent room was a mess: pieces of glass that endlessly reflected her kill were embedded in the wall, bits of wood - large and small - lay scattered haphazardly about the floor, loose leaves of paper spilled from the remains of the desk in a flood of ink and pulped tree, and rose petals gently drifted through the air, spiralling to rest upon the polished hardwood floor and intricate Vacuan rug.

It was the chattering of teeth that drew her gaze first. To the side of the room, cowering behind an immensely carved and upholstered chair, was a young woman no older than twenty-five. She gripped her duster with knuckles white as snow, blue eyes that were now more pupil than anything else, snapping from the beheaded visage behind her and her own black and, now a little extra red, form.

"It's okay," she said as calmly as she could, "I'm not here to hurt you, only him."

The woman only trembled harder at the sound of her muffled and distorted voice; her mind so consumed by panic that it was unable to comprehend her words, only the gleaming steel blade that dripped life onto the floor and screamed death.

 _That won't work...how to help…_

She snapped her fingers in revelation, the sudden crack causing the woman to flinch back in surprise. Black clad hands slipped into a pocket on the killer's thigh and pulled out the most unexpected thing.

"Here," she said, arm outstretched and holding one of her prized double chocolate chip cookies, "cookies make everything better." The woman did not - _could not_ \- move. She could only stare uncomprehendingly at the sweet that simply _did not_ _fit_ with the image around her.

"I promise it won't bite, in fact," she said with a devious smile the woman could not see, "you'll be the one bit-" The door burst open, slamming against the wall with a bang as the solid iron doorknob made contact with the unyielding stone. In the frame stood gangsters of all shapes and sizes, holding a various assortment of weaponry. They stood in shock, eyes wide and sprinting in their sockets in an effort to take in the scene before them.

 _Uh oh._

She threw the cookie like a frisbee, the weaponized treat making contact with the first goon's eye. In the same motion her head snapped back to the window and she darted toward it. The crackling of her boots on broken glass and the confused shout of 'what the fuck' faded into background noise as she activated her semblance and launched herself back out the window in a vibrant missile of red.

She landed with a roll on the roof directly across the window, bursting out of the motion in a fluid leap over the maze of ducts that lined the rooftop like veins.

"There! Across the roof, right there!"

 _Nope, no, there's nobody here._ The roar of gunshots filled the night as the goons' submachine guns belched dust propelled lead at high speeds. The air around her was ripped and torn apart by the bullets that howled through the wind for her blood.

She zigged and zagged across the roof, her cloak obscuring her leaps and bounds as it billowed behind her, mocking the goons with its snapping and fluttering. Bullets buried themselves in the wall and ducts around her, a chorus of pings and heavy shattering of brick that penetrated the cloth covering her ears. She leapt, right foot making the briefest contact with the wall before her, before petals replaced her form.

She came to a stop five feet above the lip of what was, a few seconds ago, her sniper perch. _Dammit, dammit, dammit;_ she took two seconds to fall back down to the concrete roof. _Two seconds too long._ She landed in a crouch, one hand shooting to the left to envelope the still warm barrel in a shroud of cloth. It scraped out a thanks as the stock and the cement rooftop fought.

A bullet slapped against the back of her neck before ricocheting across the rooftop and burying itself in a self dug grave of cement. _Just ignore the red cloak, nothing to see here._

"Chase her, _fucking chase her!_ Get in the cars, _now!_ " The voice was panicked, furious, and four hundred feet too far behind her to do anything. She grinned victoriously underneath her mask as she reached the edge of rooftop furthest from the tower, a burst of twisting petals replacing her cloaked form right at the edge.

The world faded to red for the briefest of seconds before rocketing back into being around her.

She landed in a run, her tattered cloak throwing petals behind her as she heard the roar of car engines spring to life below and behind her. Baby #1 launched to the right, the glistening crescent catching on the rusted steel cylinder that formed the base of a worn electro-board. Her momentum had her rocketing around, gravity tugging at the edge of her consciousness for a second before her finger snapped a button and the blade and staff pivoted into war-scythe mode, elongating into almost a spear shape. The scythe's hold was broken, the splitting curse of metal grating across metal ceasing as her centripetal momentum redirected her to shooting over the street.

Her head snapped to the right in mid-air, the red of her visor reflecting three orange and black, speeding vans that churned and roared. She heard someone shout from them, and while she wasn't sure exactly what they said, the eruption of muzzle flashes from the windows told her it wasn't good.

Black boots landed on worn, grey concrete with a splash, shattering the oozy peace of a stagnant roof puddle. She felt bullets slash through the air behind her, but ignored them, continuing straight across the rooftop in a blur of red and black. Tires screeched below her and shouted curses broke the calm night air as the vans desperately tried to both preserve momentum and change direction. The high-pitched crumpling of metal combined with the shattering of brick erupted below, and she smiled. _One down._

To an outside observer the burning crimson of her cloak would seem to envelop her body, its redness hiding her limbs behind an impenetrable shroud of solid color. At the same time, her entire form would seem to spiral, morphing into an angry bullet of pure red, of which only the tip seemed to be solid. The rest was a flurry of flaming, solid red tendrils that stretched and faded behind, swirling and morphing into rose petals that flew with equal intensity.

Twin vans roared down the streets and out of the stone mouth of twin buildings linked by a bridge, leaving behind a dancing wake of street dust and trash that flourished in the intermittent and silver light of the moon. Bullets and voices howled as they rent the tranquility of night apart and slammed into the brick and mortar of the buildings she stood upon, punctuated every now and then by a sharp crack of breaking glass and a scream.

 _Someone's gonna get killed if this keeps up._ Her cloaked and masked head swiveled, scanning the brilliant light show that was the nighttime Vale skyline. Silver eyes locked onto a dome of sky-blue that dominated the skyline in a four block radius, and she grinned beneath the cotton of her mask. _That'll do._

The dome was two blocks to her right and straight down a road crossed with glimmering blue crosswalks that lit up the solid black of the street. And, best of all, it was empty.

The shroud of spiralling red around her body vanished as she neared the curved stone crenellations of the roof before her. Warm, yellow lights baked the street below in artificial heat from a sign she could not see. Aura poured into her legs as she pushed off with her right foot and leapt into the air towards the curve. Black soles gnashed and fought against the stone, further smoothing with every powerful step she took; she could faintly feel gravity again attempt to shove all her blood and organs into her feet, but her aura stopped it cold.

The stone was beneath her feet for a solid two seconds before it vanished, leaving her flying through the air, tattered cloak flapping as petals undulated behind and around her and the scythe. If she didn't have her mask on then the whole block would've been lit up with the light reflecting off her smile. Her right hand snapped to her belt, clipping a chord to her waist, before, just as fast, shooting over to the haft of her baby and snapping onto the anchor at the bottom with a click. The shattered moon seemed to nod, and she shot off with a vengeance.

Everything but the shining blue of the dome faded away to shades of red and black as the building rushed to meet her. She flipped one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, her black boots tearing through the head of her spiral as her semblance deactivated. She twisted her wrist and snapped a button on the haft in one motion, the scythe, now on her left, clanked as it resumed its normal form. Mere seconds later metal cleaved into brick. Where metal met stone a black gash was left behind, sending chunks of brick flying indiscriminately in a plume behind her. She could feel her momentum bleeding away with every growl of the dome beneath her before, finally, she ceased, and the scythe caught.

She let go without a second thought, falling all of three feet below the shaft of her baby before the cord around her waist snapped taut. Her boots met the blue stone with a thud as the pendulum of her body swung towards it, curling inwards with the collision to lessen the blow. At the same time, her right hand shot to the rectangle of black and red steel that was clipped to the small of her back.

The cars were barrelling down the road, their engines and drivers belting obscenities almost as colorful as their paint job. Baby #2 blossomed in her grip.

The pair were two blocks away, neck and neck as guns bristled from their windows.

She brought the familiar stock to her shoulder, muscles instinctively relaxing at the intimate position.

One block away.

She centered the crosshairs exactly where Driver One's chest would be in two seconds.

Two-thousand feet.

She exhaled. And fired.

The roar of her rifle matched the first barks of their own submachine guns, which were just as quickly silenced.

A font of red sprayed across the back window of Car One, coating the people in the backseat in the blood of their comrade, but they didn't have time to process that. Immediately, the car veered to the right; Driver Two slammed on the brakes, black smoke from burning rubber erupting from behind the wheels. He almost made it, but oversteered to the left just a little too much. Car One, now horizontal to the street, finally gave in to physics, its top momentum causing it to roll end over end down the happily lit street. At the same time, Car Two clipped some poor family's stairs, flipping it onto its side as it skidded down the street in a finale of scraping steel and curtains of sparks accompanied by a mechanical growl she assumed was one of their engines.

A few bodies were flung from Car One, ragdolling across the ground and smearing the pavement red, but only a few. None came from Car Two.

It took thirty seconds for both cars to come to a rest, and all the while the faint growl grew louder. Car One was nothing but a crumpled ingot of steel, leather, and wiring that occasionally leaked blood. Car Two was a lot better off, having merely ridden its side across the, now smeared orange, pavement. Her breath burst from her mouth as she lowered her rifle, the carbon dioxide forming a cloud of barely visible air before it was whisked away by the cold night's breeze.

But yet, she couldn't quite relax, something nipped at the back of her mind, a sense that whispered danger in her ear. Her eyes went wide. _The growl._ The tail end of the thought was punctuated by a blinding burst of white light that, even through her visor, had her raising her hand in an attempt to stem it. Her head shot to the source of the light, eyes just able to make out the overlaid axes emblazoned on a shield and framed in a laurel that heralded the Vale Police Department.

She stiffened. _Shit._

"Lay down your weapons and surrender peacefully," a mechanical voice shouted, just barely clearing the ear-shattering din of the Bullhead's engines.

She was moving before the voice even spoke, barrel flying to the spot where her scythe lay buried in the blue stone of the dome. The starting whir of a rotary cannon nipped at her ears as she fired, emptying her magazine on the anchor. One crack sent debris pinging off her visor, two cracks loosed a chunk of stone the size of her fist. _Come on, baby, come on._ Three had the tip of the scythe completely exposed, slipping loose as it grated across stone; she fell. Seconds later the bone shaking _BRRRRRRT_ of a Bullhead's cannon obliterated the air, pelting her aura with\ shrapnel that bloomed from the innumerable impact points.

Her left hand just had time to grab the haft of her scythe before she shot away in a cloud of petals in the first direction she saw.

"Eep!" Her head narrowly missed the billboard that had materialized in front of it, the sparkling neon rushing past her ear in a solid whoosh of displaced air. She tucked and rolled again to recover, a spinning ball of torn red and harsh black that broke apart as quickly as it had formed. Her feet fought for a skidding stop from her roll, nearly smooth soles screeching as the pavement below furthered their flatness. Pale lips moved in unseen curses behind her mask, words drowned out by the tunnel vision of simply stopping.

Her scythe sprang to life in her hand, the neon green and blue above mixing gruesomely with the crimson stain that still clung to the blade. With a flick of her wrist and the splitting of air she slammed it into the ground beneath her, sending chunks of roof shooting in every direction. Even then it took her another two seconds and twenty feet to stop.

The high pitched wail of sirens and the occasional pop of a gun nipped at her ears as her breath came out in quick expulsions. The complete absence of the Bullhead's mechanical growl didn't have her sprinting off right away, so she must be somewhat safe. _Wheeeeere am I…_ Her head swiveled from side to side, taking in the unfamiliar view of the familiar city around her.

To her left was nothing but an endless line of rooftops lit by the dim white of lamps far below her, in front of her was- _whoa._ Her scope shot to her eyes.

Directly in front of her, a little over four-hundred feet away, was the crest of The Wall. The gargantuan structure towered over the streetlamps, cars, and even buildings that rose feebly from the ground. Moonlight, flickering and silver, bounced off the solid steel that lined the floor of the walkway, dashing to the immense gun emplacements that bristled like spikes off an Ursa Major's hide. The four main cannons she could see were absolutely massive, their silver barrels large enough for her to slide down with all her gear and still have room to spare, their lights and computers glowing steadily in the night, and each one had a soldier behind them on a single seat while another scanned the ground below with what must've been nightvision binoculars.

In the consistent forty feet between each cannon were four 68mm quad-barreled rotary cannons, and three 84mm flak cannons. _The rotary cannons double as flak in times of emergency, capable of firing six-thousand normal depleted dust shells or four-thousand dust enhanced shells per minute._ She unconsciously inched closer. _Six-barrelled flak cannons capable of firing explosive shells that, even alone, could shred an ancient nevermore into nothing but feathers and a squawk._ She had left her scythe behind in her quest to just get _closer_ to the works of art that these weapons were.

And this was just what she could _see_! Her mind raced as silver eyes framed by her scope lapped up every drop of Grimm Soup making beauty in her line of sight. The crest of the wall, the walkway that all this was stationed on, was over forty feet thick, and beneath it, until they reached fifty feet above the ground, every level was equally, if not more heavily, armed.

 _I want ten._

She stayed there for what must've been over an hour, studying every steel spring and screw that made up these death worshipping monstrosities, and she loved every second of it.

 _How have I not been here before?_

She didn't have a watch so she didn't know exactly _when_ she began to physically and mentally tear herself away, but she did know it was late and that it took, well, a while. It helped that the blood staining her babies was slightly more important than these graceful giants.

"One day, guys," she said, backpedalling as slowly as possible to the edge of the roof behind her, eyes still locked on their glory. Her hand gripped the handle of her scythe still buried in the ground. "One day I'm gonna take one of you apart. And it's gonna be _awesome._ "

She turned and leapt off the roof, a figure who would've been invisible against the blackness of the night sky if it weren't for the torn, frayed, and brilliantly red cloak that framed her figure. The pure white glow of the dust lamps below, at odds with the sky blue frames they were crafted from, was gobbled up by the darkness of asphalt and tar before being recycled as brilliantly white cross walks emblazoned like tatoos against the ground. The moon peaked out from behind its blanket of moisture just to watch her as the red blur that was Ruby Rose blinked in and out of existence, replaced by a radiant bolt of red.

* * *

"Awww c'mon," she complained as her finger found _yet another_ new hole in her cloak courtesy of Nix's cartel.

"Fuckin' dust-damn drug hustlers," she muttered as her hand fumbled sightlessly to her left for the red scraps she _knew_ were there somewhere. Pale, calloused hands finally met soft cloth and she internally sighed in relief, shifting the needle to in between her lips as she pressed some of the cloth over the hole in an effort to gauge its size. It wasn't even _near_ where her body would be, those guys seriously needed better guns. Or better aim.

Milky hands criss-crossed with tiny, faded scars flitted across her cloak, looping the needle in and out of the soft fabrics as she patched them together. Though she had only started damage control sewing, as she called it, this year she'd had plenty of opportunities to practice with how often her cloak got filled with holes and tears. Her lips pressed into a thin line on her face. _Doesn't make it cheap though; easily a whole day or four's earnings down the drain for just a single bolt of cloth._ Either she needed to get better or make more money. Her jaw locked. _Get better it is._

Her eyes roved longingly across the temptation that was her bed while she worked; she _reeeaaally_ wanted to sleep, but she also knew that she had to get this done now or these tiny holes would bloom into full blown rips the next time she 'hit the town.'

She'd already done her weapon maintenance first thing once she got back, fawning over her babies with rag and oil. Her scythe was perfectly fine, not a single nick in the steel crescent, but that didn't stop her from running her whetstone over it relentlessly just for good measure. Her sniper rifle had a few new scrapes and gouges on the stock from where it'd fought with the concrete, but it was nothing an hour of polishing couldn't fix.

Which brought her to her current, and a lot less _fun_ , situation: wardrobe repair, AKA: Cloak City. It wasn't that the rest of her gear was undamaged, it was just that, well, this was her _cloak_. As much as she hated to admit it she could always find another jacket or mask or what have you, but her cloak had been with her from the beginning of it all, through Patch, the mainland, and now Vale.

 _Patch…_

Her mind played through all her happier memories of the island, before the fall. A game of tag with Yang in the undisturbed, perfect blanket of white on winter mornings, baking double chocolate chip cookies with her dad and laughing as they came out as lumps of coal, getting the new puppy Zwei and finally having someone who had as much energy as she did, two too many blonds that, in their own twisted realities, thought their _horrible_ puns were funny. They almost made her smile, almost made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but they didn't. Couldn't. Every single one was tainted, every memory buzzing with the muted undercurrent of bitterness and resentment that skittered underneath them like rats under the floorboards of a warehouse. She couldn't see it, but she could _feel_ it, and, even now, it still hurt.

"Stupid promises," she mumbled under her breath, pale fingers even whiter from the lack of blood her clenched fists permitted to them.

 _Stupid family, stupid hunters,_ her eyes dilated slightly in anger, _stupid_ Grimm.

 _Stop it_ , a voice in the back of her mind whispered, _you know this leads to nowhere._

She sighed, consciously forcing her thoughts of what used to be her home to the back of her mind. She dug the needle into her finger, her aura flared and protested, but the pain gave her something to focus on.

She shoved all thoughts away and let the constant sewing consume her mind.

It took her a solid fifteen seconds to realize she'd been resewing the same hole over and over again. Her mouth morphed into a frown, _well at least that won't tear any more._ Her eyes grazed her treasured white thread, _waste of thread though._

She leapt to her feet as fast as she could, her arms stretched to their limit in a vain attempt to touch the roof. She relished in the pops that resonated through her body, combined with the perfect burn of stretching stiff muscles.

Her legs brought her to her bed and she smiled as she plopped onto her straw and cotton filled "mattress" with a moan of pleasure voiced by every muscle in her body. It was _definitely_ not the longest period of time she'd ran and used her semblance for, that title went to her two day long nonstop retreat from a Goliath. But still, it was nice to lay down.

She sighed a contented sigh that skipped around her container. The stale morning air of the docks whistled a lively tune as it snaked its way through the tiny gap she'd left in the container doors. It smelled of salt, dead fish, and industry, but she didn't care. It was nice to rest. The briefest of thoughts of checking the sketch under her bed flew to the front of her mind before being almost instantly slapped down by a voice that pleaded for sleep.

She knew she should be heading to the Commercial District to nab a good spot for the day, but she just couldn't find it in herself to actually care.

She slipped into a well deserved sleep with a smile still gracing her face.

* * *

 **A/N: Welcome back to** _Sanguine_ **! First off,** _ **wow**_ **, was not expecting such a huge response to chapter one (not really that big in the grand scheme of things, but it's huge to me)! Second off, I'm really really glad you guys liked the first chapter so much!**

 **This chapter, oh boy, this chapter is a** _ **doozy**_ **. Longest single chapter I've ever released I think, and definitely a lot of fun to write. Funnily enough, the first draft of this chapter actually didn't have a chase scene; it wasn't until I was reading this last week (about to release it then) that I was kinda like "Huh, you know what would be awesome? A chase scene." So I shoved some stuff to the side/deleted some lines and placed it in. Suffice to say that I enjoyed writing it.**

 **Anyway, loaded chapter for a lot of stuff, hope you guys like it! Hope y'all have a good day, and stay safe!**

 **November 30th, 2016: Dream sequence edited out and added to the very start of Chapter Three to help with super clumped and awkward pacing.**

 **May 17th, 2017 Editing: Reread the chapter and revised the grammar, phrasing, and word choice to make it less messy. I think it flows better, but that might just be me. Chapter Six will be posted later today!**


	3. Sunny Day Snow

**Note: First section of this chapter is the dream sequence from the end of Chapter Two (pre-November 30th, 2016 editing), so if you read the original, unedited Chapter Two then this might seem super familiar to you. Did this so the pacing in Two doesn't feel so rushed, which, on a reread, it seemed to be.**

* * *

The bodies around her were mangled and torn, blood spewing from severed arteries and bowels spilling across the grass like an old meal. Acrid smoke and burning flesh seared her nostrils, overwhelming the stench of death that had reigned there.

i'm sorry

The blood was rising around her like a lake, the dancing flames of houses giggling and laughing at her.

i did this i did this i-im sorry sorry so sorry

Empty eyes of dead and mutilated men, women, and children stared back at her. They could not, would not, forgive her. There was no mercy in this world, even though she'd tried so hard to create it.

sorrysorrysorry im-

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAAAAHAAA YOU CAUSED THIS AND YOU SAY YOU'RE SORRY

Blackness followed by a burning green filled her eyes, scorching them in their sockets as the last pierced her ears. It overwhelmed her, ricocheted off the bone of her skull and blew all other thoughts out of existence.

The world burned a brilliant red, all other colors fading into nothingness before a pale glow found its way to her eyes.

Whiteness enveloped her, but the burning scent of slaughter did not recede, instead it was accompanied by an even greater growth of coppery blood.

A face stared back at her. A face of a girl with a pale complexion and soft features. Her red-tipped hair came down to her shoulders in an unkempt deluge of grease and soot and ash. Silver eyes burning with hatred and fury bore into her soul. A massive mess of a scar dragged its way from the leftmost corner of her forehead and across her nose to under her right eye, there it blended with another that howled from under the burning silver and across her cheek to her jaw, marring her face in an eternal scream of flesh.

Blood flowed freely from gashes across the girl's arm, chest, and thighs, leaking smoking crimson fluid that spiralled away into the void around them. Dirt, ash, and soot stained them both, coloring their bodies in a menagerie of gray and black.

In her tiny, scarred, and bleeding hands she gripped an old scythe, the blade easily twice as long as her arm and the ash staff taller than her full height. The blade trembled and shook, gleaming in a light that came from nowhere.

" _Why?!"_ she roared, the pure embodiment of anger fading away into the void around them. " _Why do this?!_ "

Her mouth moved without her order, the voice that emerged dreadfully familiar to her, but yet not her own. "I didn't do this, kid. You did, make no mistake about that. If you hadn't come along all these people would be fine an' merry." Her mouth, but not her mouth, warped into a twisted smile as he watched the girl reel in comprehension. The furious snarl on her face morphed into shock and she staggered backwards as if she'd been struck.

"This is your fault, kiddo."

Her face but not her face vanished from her sight as she locked eyes with the ground, her bloody and stained rat's nest of hair replacing the only thing her eyes could see.

"You killed them."

A murmur rose up from behind the veil of red-tipped hair that hid her face, "What was that?"

Her head shot up, hair snapping back and upward in a violent tumble as her tiny frame shook with rage. " _Shut. Up!"_ She bellowed, high voice cracking with emotion. The scars on her face wrinkled and twisted in a gruesome tango of flesh as she shouted and shook, making her rage seem that much more massive.

She smiled, but she didn't.

"There ain't no forgiveness in this world, kid. Only death, so go on then, add to it."

The kid howled in a pure beastial display of emotion, a raw mix of pain, rage, and a small bit of resignation. Tiny, blood soaked arms swung with all their might, launching the gleaming blade towards her face, but not her face. She felt it dig into her throat, but not her throat.

She couldn't look away.

* * *

Ruby woke clutching her throat, hands locked around the delicate and pale cord of muscle, bone, and nerves that kept her alive and thinking. For a panic filled moment her brain thought they were someone else's hands, some old enemy come to claim their revenge on her. Her muscles contracted even more, cramps flaring to life in her legs as her brain screamed at her to fight, to _live_.

But then the moment passed, collapsing out of her thoughts like the arms that fell heavily to the corrugated floor with a hollow thud. The sound echoed coldly through the rusty container, droning on and on until the bitter hiss of sea winds tore it apart.

 _Haven't had that one in a while._

Slender fingers numb from the cold scraped subconsciously against the straw of her mattress. The crinkling of brittle stalks functioned as the perfect background noise for her thoughts.

Her thoughts were far away from the sapping gray of the docks, far away from the empty steel container she'd nicknamed her home, far away from the injustice and grime that was the Industrial District, and far away from the social dichotomy that was the city of Vale.

The chest filling blare of a shipping horn caused forced itself to the front of her mind, leaving behind a shattered trance that enticed her focus back to the rusted metal and smelly winds that were her present.

 _First things first, figure out the time._ Fresh muscles, quite literally, leapt to the task, shifting her from prone to standing in no time at all. Bare feet barely made a sound as her form almost floated to the door of her container. Ancient hinges groaned in protest as she began to pull, their protests changed to piercing shrieks as the peace of stagnation was replaced with a fissure of sunlight.

 _Well hello there, Mr. Sun, haven't seen you in these parts for a while_ , she thought, thin and dirt coated body clad in threadbare clothes plopping to the floor.

She sat there, eyes closed and body relaxed as she bathed in the warm glow of the a-little-past-noon sun. _This is nice,_ she thought as she began to regain some feeling in her formerly frozen fingers. A voice in her mind whispered to her, speaking harsh truths about her wasting away the already slim day's earnings.

Years ago she might've ignored it, might've just sat there and let the sun warm her body some more after an especially freezing night, but not now. Now her body rose, threadbare cloth screaming a sound of a thousand leaves brushing against a knife for all the ants and microbes that crawled around her. _Damn fidgety thoughts._ She knew they were right, but that didn't make leaving the rare embrace of the sun on her home any easier.

Two minutes later she emerged once again from her worn down metallic cave clad in her typical beggar attire: a black tee-shirt three sizes too big for her that was dotted with holes, and her trusty pair of stained and torn jeans that were six inches too long. Her knapsack was slung over her shoulders, serving as both the deposit for the money she earned as well as anything else she could get her hands on. She shut the door behind her with a swift kick before dismounting the top of her pile with a few practiced leaps that had her eager legs screaming with joy.

She retraced the same path she'd used the night before to get to her favorite location, ignoring the smog that was belched from the factories, and the glares levelled at her by some faunus. The sun drowned in the haze of pollution that roiled into the sky on her trip through the asscrack of Vale, masking the area in a permanent and artificial overcast that had her frayed shirt collar pressed against her mouth and nose. Occasionally she would stop and call out a muffled greeting to familiar face, or return one from a particularly kind, or brave, faunus, but overall her journey was uneventful.

The streets of the Industrial District however, were much more crowded than they were the night before, no commercial district, but the small pockets of strays and policemen had grown to groups of grimy faunus kids skittering and laughing as rusted pipes crashed against trash can lids. She smiled beneath her shirt.

A tiny cry of panic combined with the soft collision of something against her aura caused her head to snap to the right, arm instinctively catching the stumbling form.

"Gotta watch where you're going there, kiddo," she said happily. Brief flashes of a man with blood red eyes, pitch black hair, and a flask in hand morphed her smile into a grimace as they intruded in her thoughts at the use of the word. She swatted them back down where they belonged, thankful for the impromptu mask her shirt had provided; she leaned in conspiratorially to the youngster, his brown eyes locked on the ground and his ears flat against his head in shame. "Good fighters always know what's around them," she said with a ruffle of his hair for good measure.

His head bobbed up and down with a fury, mouth muttering agreements with incomprehensible speed before he dashed off back to his friends. Their eyes scanned her, taking in every aspect of her grimy form before they too dashed off into the alley next to them.

A frown of concentration from both her mouth and her brows marked her face as she wondered what she'd done wrong. It took her a second to remember. _It's because I'm human._ A hand fought through the tangled mess that was her hair as she sighed. _They're afraid of me._ Chilled fingers traced down the rough scar tissue that marred her face, feeling the stiff, callous flesh at such odds with the rest of her soft and smooth skin.

She didn't realize it, but her pace quickened.

* * *

Not even the endless roar of machinery in the Northeastern Industrial District could overpower the chaotic cacophony of humanity that was the Commercial District. She could hear it as she drew ever closer to her spot, and she smiled, removing the threadbare mask of her shirt as she did. She moved faster as she neared the glowing mouth of the alleyway, the blackness and muck of the corridor around her growing ever more confining. With one final stride she stepped out into the light of the city's heart.

Before her was a massive square that seemed to go on endlessly, and if it hadn't been for the fact that she'd been here many times before she would think it did since she couldn't really see over anyone. Rivers of humanity flooded the place, streaming by before her as streaks of colored cloth that babbled, screamed, laughed, joked, and complained. What seemed like a thousand voices joined together in a single din of life that she never could get use to, but still somehow enjoyed.

She turned to the left almost immediately, a speck of unwashed dirt swept away by the power of an overwhelming sea of bodies. She ducked and weaved in between them with practiced grace, dodging sudden elbows, thrown arms, and jostling bodies. _Take a left riiiiight abooooooooout_ now! She twirled around a man who shouted futilely into his phone at some unknown child, his three chins jiggling with the force of his voice. Spread before her was a narrow side street, not quite an alley, but not quite a road either, its winding cobblestone shadowed by overhanging signs from stores of all types: a games store next to a butcher shop, which was next to a florist, and then a barber shop.

She stopped briefly to stare at the window front for the games store, stocked high as it was with super advanced entertainment devices and the latest and greatest video games on the market.

 _One day, my friends. One day._

Rubber soles clonked softly on the cobblestone beneath her as she made her way ever deeper into the side street, avoiding physical contact with every person that rushed on by her. It wasn't long before she found herself in her familiar spot: a quietly bustling street corner within sight of a plaza market on her left, and flanked by several coffee and snack shops. She sat down with a hum, unslinging her knapsack from her shoulders and depositing it, top open, on the ground in front of her, and her day started.

She really was quite proud of her spot, all things considered. It wasn't the best, no, those spots were full of competition so fierce you might find yourself face down in a gutter with a jury rigged shank in your stomach, not that the police cared. That said, hers was nice. Far enough away from a marketplace plaza to where she didn't suffocate, but close enough to entice those who hadn't yet made it to the marketplace to give her a lien or two, as well as those who had already left to maybe drop a piece of food. It helped that she had retained her expert pouting skills from before the Fall of Patch, even with the scar it was irresistible.

It was difficult, sitting still for so long with not much to occupy her hyperenergetic mind, but she made due. Simply watching all the types of people that passed through was entertaining, and that didn't include listening in on their conversations. Everyone, even the ultra-rich elite, visited the marketplaces of Vale, and she didn't blame them, if she had the money…

 _If I had the money…_

She didn't know. Having money had just never been a thing she'd really experienced.

"Got any change, ma'am?" She asked, face morphed into her best pout. The woman, her dark face coated in green makeup glanced at her, green eyes roaming for the source of the voice. They met silver with a gentle curiosity that quickly flared into disgust. Her black hair flourished as her head snapped to anything but the disgusting orphan next to her. She hurried away, blue dress flowing more gracefully than she deserved. Ruby watched her go, silver eyes hardening on the blue form.

She hmph'ed; _fine, didn't want your lien anyway, bitch._ She scanned the scene before her again for any likely donors, but nobody of note leapt out at her: A family of screaming children barely contained by two practically-zombie parents, couples that ignored everything around them except for the other's eyes, a smartly dressed fox faunus holding a briefcase as his foot tapped incessantly and impatiently beneath him. She sighed, slim fingers fiddling with the threads of her shirt. _Nothing._

Silver eyes flickered to a foam McRonald's cup laying dejectedly on the trash laden street. _I know how you feel, cup._ She was used to the apathy people showed, and she could usually shrug off the disgust they looked at her with, but not all the time. Sometimes it just stayed with her no matter how hard she tried.

 _Can't win all the time, right cup? Sometimes ya just got-_

A black boot polished to an unnatural shine crushed her new friend, sending beads of foam flying, while the circular chunks stuck up like the broken ribs of a torn open chest.

She blinked.

"Right this way, ma'am." The deep bass came from directly above the crushed remnants of her friend, stern yet subservient. Silver eyes traced up the immaculately black silk suit the man was clad in, somehow avoiding every speck of dust in the entirety of Vale. His shoulders were broad and his arms massive, and his eyes were hidden behind black reflections of the city around him. She could see her own dirt and grease covered face staring back at her, a ragged streak of darkened scar tissue separating bright silver eyes.

She shifted on her spot, head turning inquisitively to see whoever the man was serving, and when she did her eyes hardened once again.

Behind the man were ten other equally large and equally intimidating men in identical suits, hands of various shades hovering over unusually large bulges in their coats. _Armed, how heavily though?_ They traveled in a box around a girl who could best be described as white. Platinum white hair tied in an off center ponytail sat atop a hard face of skin even paler than Ruby's. She was dressed in a pure white top with an elongated and blood red inside collar, as her clothes got further from her torso they changed delicately into a soft, wintery blue. Her skirt was trimmed with a pure white lace that was reminiscent of snowflakes: breathtaking in its complex fragility. Her clothes radiated a frail delicacy, but the face, her face spoke a different story entirely.

Where her collar was soft and velvety her face was rigid and stern, with sharp cheekbones that accentuated the aggressive apathy her expression radiated. Where the lace was delicate and fragile her eyes were hard and unforgiving, glacial blue crystals that scanned and assessed everything they saw.

And then they saw her.

It was only for the briefest of seconds, a fleeting flash of emotion that was promptly crushed by the reapplication of her emotionless mask, but she'd seen it enough before to recognize it, and, for some reason, it angered her. _Disgust. Revulsion. Nasty. Gross, distaste, abhorrence, repugnance sickness hatred angertrashdirtworthlesssickeningnobodygivesadamnyoudon'tknow_

 _ANYTHING_

"Got any change, miss?" The words flew from her mouth without her permission, dripping with venom that surprised even herself. She wasn't exactly sure why she said it, but it felt good.

The girl turned, blue chips dragging themselves to her spot, delaying as long as they could from seeing her _disgusting_ form again. _That's right. Look at me._ The footsteps from the guards around her had stopped, their hands frozen above the entrance to their jackets that housed their weapons. She didn't care, she just wanted to force this girl to acknowledge her, to _make her_ understand that she was just as human as her.

"Excuse me?" She asked, her face remained an emotionless mask, but her voice was indignation given physical form. She loved it.

She nudged the knapsack at her feet with her falling-apart black boots, exaggerating their wear and tear as much as she could. Her mouth morphed into a smile, though it had a wicked edge. "Got any change?" Her words were slow and deliberate, her mouth moving in exaggerated motions to make her enunciation extra clear.

The girl's eyes flashed with annoyance before shifting to something akin to smug satisfaction. "I'm afraid I'm all out, I bought so much food in the market after all, as well as some new shoes and school supplies," she said, voice awash with fake regret as her face moved into the fakest frown Ruby had ever seen. "What was the total sum again, Guardsman Werkzeug?"

The man closest to her didn't even hesitate, "two-hundred-and-thirty-four-thousand six-hundred-and-fifty-five lien, Miss Schnee."

Ruby had two reactions. The first was absolute bafflement that anybody could even _have_ that much money, let alone spend it in a marketplace in one day. The second was anger. _Schnee._ Ruby's mouth compressed itself into a thin line, brows drawn close together and scar rippling with malcontent.

The Schnee gave the man named Werkzeug a quick nod of thanks before turning back to her. "That's right, such a tiny amount of spending money must've slipped my mind, I'm _terribly_ sorry about that Miss…?"

"Scarlet," she growled, steel eyes locked on blue as her fingernails dug into her palms. "Beryl Scarlet." No way in _hell_ was she giving someone as powerful as a Schnee her real name, no telling what she could do with that information.

"Well, Miss Scarlet," she said, drawing a hand over her breast in mock sadness. "I am truly sorry, but I don't have any _physical_ lien remaining," her voice said anything but as she gave Ruby's knapsack a once-over. "I suppose you'll just have to make to do with your _stellar_ earnings for today." The Schnee gave her a smug curtsy before turning on her heel, her guardsmen following without the need for an order.

Her silver eyes burned as she watched that _stupid_ white snowflake just waltz off, and, for the second time today, emotion overruled her mind as her mouth spoke. "At least I actually _earned_ my money, at least it's _mine_." She stood, tiny arms with muscles like steel cable taut and trembling with fury. "At least I don't waltz around shoving my _Daddy's_ money into people's faces while pretending I did anything to _earn_ any of it!" The snowflake stopped, but she continued.

"At least I'm not a spoiled brat living in her own little isolated bubble of wealth and ignorance that everyone else is just _beneath_."

The Schnee turned, cold blue flames flickering in her eyes; she spoke clearly, but quietly, her voice a dangerous whisper with a tone of ice. "And where is your father, hm? Drugged up in an alleyway? A drunkard in the gutter?" The girl in white took a step towards her, the human wall of black silk moving in time with her steps. "A useless waste of space just like his daughter, no doubt. Where is he, _Scarlet?_ Where is _your_ father?"

" _Gone!"_ She shouted, scar rippling with the anger etched on her face. "He's _gone!_ They're all _gone._ "

Silver eyes may have been locked on the Schnee heiress, but they saw nothing; there was only the reality of her emotions and words as she spoke. "But I don't need them, I do fine on my own," she growled, foot nuding her bag of earnings unconsciously as she did. _Talking to yourself or her?_ She paused, mind full of hate roused by the heiress and amplified a hundred times by dusty old memories full of pain. "I hope they're _dead._ " Her tone was absolute, her words practically spat onto the grey sidewalk beneath her.

Silence. The street was drowning under a rush of quiet as a hundred pairs of eyes showed a spectrum of emotions: from pity, to sadness, to shock. She _hated_ it.

" _What_ ," she spat at the heiress, noticing how imperceptibly she flinched, "didn't _expect_ that? Didn't _count_ on it?" She bent down and grabbed her knapsack, no use trying to make any more cash here after that display. Her shoulders drooped ever so slightly when she saw just how little was in the bag. _No more than twenty lien._ Silver eyes flicked up to a flake of white behind an impenetrable wall of black. _While she has millions._ What did someone even _do_ with all that money? "Not everyone has a perfect life like you, Schnee. Not everyone's where they are by _choice_."

She stood up, slinging her knapsack over her shoulder as she did. Silver eyes met blue, but they couldn't tell what emotion was there. Frankly, she didn't care; it wouldn't make a difference, anyway. "But I guess that never occurs to someone who has nothing but options."

She turned and stalked away, ignoring the stares of those she passed, she just wanted to get back to her home, get her gear, and go shoot something. Recon on the next facility and therefore hours of nothing was _not_ what she needed.

"Why did they abandon you?" She heard the heiress call, but she didn't want to answer. She continued onwards, ignoring the heavy footfalls behind her until she felt a hand less rest and more envelop her entire shoulder into its palm.

"Miss Schnee asked you a question, young lady," the man said, "I suggest you answer it."

The hand twisted her shoulder so that her body had to rotate with it, and she found herself looking back at the heiress, her wall of goons now less than twenty feet from her. Movement flickered far behind them, twin fox ears dancing away from the sudden crowd. _Probably spooked by the Schnee._

"Because they're _liars_ ," she growled.

A pause. "Why do you wish they were dead?"

 _Because they deserve it,_ a voice hissed, _because that's what they did for me._ She ignored it.

"Because the world is a better place without liars, without people like my family. Without people like your father," she stated.

No sooner had the words left her mouth than a wall of sound and force overwhelmed her.

She was thrust face first into the brick facade of the building next to her, her aura flaring to prevent damage. She tried to struggle, but the blow dazed her, that, combined with the iron grip enveloping her whole right arm and her policy of not using a well known assassin's semblance in public had her at a teeny tiny bit of a disadvantage.

 _The wall is swirling, but walls don't swirl. Why are you swirling?_

"Target has Aura, repeat, target has Aura." The bass bounced around her skull before her eyesight was filled with gray as she was forced to what looked suspiciously like a sidewalk, cheek slamming into the hard cement as what felt like a boulder pressed into her spine.

Her vision was clouded and her ears were ringing, though from exactly what she was unsure.

"-sure Schnee is safe!"

 _What? Safe from who? What happened?_

Shouts, orders, and even a few screams filled her ears as the sidewalk was ground ever further into her face. She was faintly aware of the fact that she could no longer feel the straps of her bag on her back.

 _My lien._

She grunted in angry surprise, left arm moving upwards to grope where her backpack had been. Instead it found silk.

She frowned. _My knapsack isn't made of silk._

Then the bashing started. Over and over her face was smashed against the rough gray of the pavement, vision blurring with pain and disorientation as each blow seemed stronger than the last. No coherent thoughts, no sentences filled her mind, instead there was only the general awareness of conflict. The fact that a hand dug itself into her hair and twisted, that her left arm was immovable under a massive weight, that her right was splayed out horizontally and twisted to the brink of breaking, and finally, the ever growing pain in her head as her aura was slowly depleted. She didn't know how many it took, only that by the end the only thing she could process was an endless stream of pain that was made apparent by her moaning.

A wet snap filled the air as a flash of pain and wall of instinctive tears blinded her. She cried out.

Only then did the bashing stop, only then were her arms twisted behind her back before unyielding plastic dug into the flesh of her wrists. She grunted in shock, vision hazy with pain and salt, before being hauled up bodily to her feet, blinking furiously to try and get the tears out of her eyes.

 _Stupid nose, stupid reflexes._

She wouldn't let them see any tears from her, instinctual or otherwise. Her face burned, splintered cartilage in her nose digging into her sinuses with every breath and movement of her head, no matter how minute.

"What was that fo-" Her voice gurgled to a stop as she observed the scene around her for the first time. A gaping crater in the road belched acrid smoke into the late evening air, the black asphalt was scorched and melted in a circle around the hole, and sharp chunks of asphalt and concrete buried themselves deep inside the brick facades of buildings.

She could see some people running to the aid of injured civilians, even one or two of Schnee's men. But the heiress herself was only visible as a small slice of white cloth behind an implacable wall of black silk bristling with weapons that scanned all directions. There were wounded, their screams and choked breaths assured that, but she couldn't see any bodies. But a bomb that size, well, there might not be much left.

The next thing she knew she was in the air, before a shoulder ended her flight directly in her gut. Her breath was forced from her lungs in a gasp of pain and shock.

She was aware of footsteps on the street beneath her, but everything seemed to swim in and out of focus, her mind throbbing in protest if she attempted to really focus on any one object. Black silk enveloped her, and she could hear the dissonant chattering of the heiress nipping at her ears before three pairs of solid blue chunks of ice filled her vision, dancing and twirling with their twins in a fire of rage.

She was pretty sure the Schnee whispered something to her, but she didn't know what, only that the tone did not sound kind.

A sharp pain flared to life in her neck before she was hurled into a blurring car. Her back met leather, but the feeling was dulled, hidden behind a wall of nonexistent cloth that thickened as her eyesight faded. It was oppressive. She gasped, silver eyes locking with the harsh glare of a perfectly white light above her. Tendrils of black stole her vision, and her consciousness faded.

* * *

 **A/N: That dream is a warped perspective (obviously) of a very key event in Ruby's life so far, let me know if you guys think it gave too much away because it's entirely possible it might.**

 **Woah boy, I have been buuuuuusy these past few weeks. Projects, papers, and exams abound alongside Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations. Suffice to say I haven't had as much time to work on the story as I'd like, thus the extended interim between chapters.**

 **The pacing here is going to seem very rushed, and, unfortunately, there's just not much I can do about that at the time. Things will slow down** _ **considerably**_ **after the next two or three chapters, but, for now, it'll still be pretty fast paced. Overall, that's probably a side effect of me aiming for longer chapters, but oh well, I'll fix it as time goes on and I get used to writing them.**

 **Hope everyone had a relaxing weekend and all, and hope you're ready for Christmas/Hannukah/The Holidays and the breaks that come with! Have a good one, and stay safe, y'all!**


	4. A688CB

Melting faces swam in and out of her vision, dancing and laughing and crying all at once. They screamed one second before switching back to happy-go-lucky the next. Each one was a husk.

There was no order, no cohesion, no _sense._ Just...noise. Human noise that bounced and shuddered and fluctuated in a chaotic swirl of vibrations that weren't really there. She slammed her hands over her ears, the warm, metallic fluid that coated them splashing and swirling in her ear canals as she did, but they did nothing. The noise penetrated them with ease, slashing through her meager shield of flesh as if it wasn't even there.

Silver eyes snapped from face to distorted face in a panic, looking but not really seeing.

 _Gold._ The thought resonated through her mind, swelling it to bursting as a pain split her skull. The faces and noise faded for a second as two equally familiar and uninvited heads of golden hair seemed to appear before her.

The faces and noise faded to background static, black, white, and gray on an endless loop of chaos. The two figures towered over her, blue and crimson eyes looking straight through her as if she wasn't even there.

 _Don't care, don't care, don't care, don't_ _ **care don't care dont care dont care dontcaredontCARE**_

She screamed and launched herself at them, pale hands coated in blood and scars grasping desperately for a hug, for a choke, for _anything._

They found nothing.

She passed right through them, crashing to the ground below in rolling sprawl. It was warped and twisted, covered in mangled roots coated in ash that slithered and writhed like a pile of snakes. She gnashed her teeth and howled as the roots began to engulf her, thrashing her limbs in a vain effort to shake them off, shake them off, shake them _off_.

Tears ran down her cheeks, but when they touched her lips they tasted not of salt, but of copper and iron. She couldn't break free, no matter how hard she tried, how viciously she fought, the stone roots did not yield. The figures of her family stood rigid and impassive, eyes locked on a faraway spot that only they could see, ignoring the struggle of life and death, of wrong and right, that raged behind them.

She wouldn't give up though, wouldn't stop fighting. She'd been through so much, too much for it all to end now, before she had really made a _difference_ , before she'd really _helped_.

The roots growled and constricted, ashen faces and skulls with grisly smiles becoming visible all around her as she sank ever deeper. Silver light danced across them, casting shadows that snarled at her presence from empty sockets.

She screamed, in despair and rage, in sadness and pain, in a torrent of emotions that consumed her mind as the world was shrouded in a storm of red.

Red like roses.

* * *

Something wet and cold as ice splashed across her face, and she spluttered into consciousness. She tried to breathe, but staggered as more water engulfed her at the same time, rushing down her throat and into her lungs. It was so cold.

Just as fast she felt herself yanked back into the air by her hair, a sharp pain that contested with the screaming of her skin as the ice water cooled even further upon it. She tried to breathe, yet again, but only got a racking cough for her trouble. She doubled over, throat clenched and lungs burning with that _stupid_ cold as her muscles contracted again and again in an effort to get it out. The back of her mind registered that her hands were bound behind her back, but her brain was too preoccupied with clearing her lungs to care.

A shove came from her left, crashing into her shoulder and sending her careening towards the floor. She gasped and tried to launch her arms in front of her to halt the fall, both ended in failure. The gasp forced a whole new wave of even more intense coughs from her, her throat clenched tight as every muscle in it contracted at once. While her hands were caught by cold metal that dug into her skin as her aura fought against it.

She met the ground forehead first, depleted aura flaring and breaking around her skull to prevent any permanent damage, but that didn't stop the pain. She would've cursed if her throat could work, would've writhed and clutched at her skull were her arms free, but they weren't. All she could do was cough and groan in pain as her body flattened out on the concrete beneath her. As concrete went it wasn't too bad actually, not too rough, not too greasy, not too bug-covered. It was cold, so cold it seemed to drink up every ounce of heat her prone body fed it and not still warm at all, but that was par for the course with sleeping on concrete; it's why you always got a box.

She groaned again, fingers grasping uselessly at air as her feet ran the length of the concrete in movements born more from pain than conscious thought. A bass voice bounced around her skull, hurting more and more with every mental collision, but she couldn't make out what it said.

An explosion of pain erupted in her side as something struck it with incredible force. She grunted as pain filled her mind, her body curling inwards, rolling onto her side as she did. A blindingly bright ball of pure white light shifted and swayed as she tried to blink it into one spot.

"I said, _get up_." The voice was back again, renewing the ache in her head with a vengeance as it seemed to thunder into her ear. "Jackson, get the shithead up." _Who's the shithead,_ she wondered softly through the pain and the light, only to be answered by a towering black form that materialized above her, shrouding her in shadow. She blinked once in confusion before an arm shot forth, a massive hand gripping her hair as it forced her upwards. Her body groaned in protest and the white overwhelmed her sigh. Nausea stirred the hornet's nest of her stomach and acrid bile filled the back of her throat. The light faded slowly, beaten back to a it's normal pinprick by an arsenal of blinks, and she found herself kneeling on the concrete before two men.

They were clad in the same black silk suits that seemed to absorb every shred of light that hit them, both of their eyes were hidden behind equally black sunglasses that showed the reflection of an imprisoned Ruby. She blinked again and opened her mouth to speak, only for a knee to slam it shut with a sudden blow to her jaw. She reeled backwards from the impact, blood pouring from a burning gash where her teeth had torn through her tongue. The single light swam overhead once again as the smell of blood permeated her nose.

"Here's how this is going to go," the man on the left said, stepping forward and flipping out an intricately carved, ivory handled switchblade from his coat that sprang to life in his hand. "You're going to tell us all about the attempt on Miss Schnee's life. You're going to tell us about every other threat to her that you and your _mutt_ friends have for her or her father. Then you're going to tell us everything you know about anything even remotely White Fang related. And we're going to record it all," he flicked his wrist to the left, the glinting steel of the blade indicating a camera with a blinking red light nestled atop a polished tripod in the corner of the room. "And send it to your _mutt_ buddies back in the Fang." For the first time a smile split across his face, a sinister thing of polished white that glowed with malice. "Then we're going to kill you."

Ruby blinked.

"You think I'm with the Fang?" She had a habit of saying the first thing that came to mind in almost every situation, turns out the threat of imminent torture and death was included in that 'almost.'

Pain exploded in her left cheek as tiny lights danced in and out of existence before her eyes. _Damn, didn't even see his fist._ "-know you're with the Fang," she heard him say as the world began to return again.

"Bu-," she leaned forward, spitting out a glob of blood that splattered across the pristine grey floor, "but I'm a human, the Fang doesn't work with humans."

Blade smiled. "You're as human as Patch is still livable, girl. Some of you mutts are lucky enough to get your _traits_ ," the word dripped with sarcasm, "cut off. Others of you have more _subtle_ traits. Let's you pass as a real person. But we've played that game before." A shrug. "Not uncommon for the more covert of the Fang operatives."

He leaned forward, the six-inch switchblade gleaming menacingly in the grey room, "so, what do you know about the attempt on Miss Schnee's life?"

Silver eyes flicked downward to the blade that was uncomfortably close to her unprotected flesh. "Nothing, I told you I'm not with the Fang, I'm human." The blade flicked into action as a shallow line of warmth erupted across her chest. She gasped, startled at how little it had actually hurt, it was like someone had dragged a pencil across her chest. Then the blood started to flow and the nerves started to burn. It dyed her black tee shirt a gruesome red across the gash in the fabric and skin, the little crimson rivers trailing down to her hips.

"Liar," the man stated. "Try again."

A hint of nervousness crept into her voice as she spoke, her wrists straining against the steel cuffs in an effort to grasp her chest. "I'm human," she insisted, gasping in pain as her breathing further opened the wound on her chest. She grit her teeth. "I've always been human, and I've never even _seen_ the Fang before. I've got nothing to do with them."

Another slash from the knife, carving just deep enough into her skin to cause excruciating pain, but not deep enough to do any real damage. The two gashes formed a bloody X across her chest. "Try again," he stated with a smile. "And you better give me the correct answer, or else James over there is gonna up the game."

She glanced over to the other man, face contorted in a grimace from the pain that flared across her chest at the movement. He didn't even acknowledge her. "Listen to me," she stated, forcing the anxiety and pain out of her voice, "I don't know anyone in the Fang, I live in a cargo container in the Industrial District on my own. Alone. The most I've ever even seen or heard of them are warnings from people to _stay away_." Neither of them moved, and a knot of panic rose in her stomach. "I'm _not with the Fang._ " Her voice shook ever so slightly.

Both men remained impassive, both faces masks of neutrality. Her eyes snapped to the one to her left searching the lenses for any shred of humanity. A flash of steel and suddenly her right ear felt like it was on fire. She screamed in surprise and pain, steel biting into the flesh of her wrists as her hands fought like mad in a vain battle to cup the wound and help quench the pain. It felt like her whole right cheek was aflame, and even the constant flow of blood down her cheek did nothing to quell it. She curled inwards.

 _Breathe._ She gasped and screwed her eyes shut, the pain roared, scraping away at her thoughts. _Breathe._ But slowly, - _Breathe-_ slowly it began to fade to a simmer. She was aware their voices, pounding away in shouted tones that only further accentuated the pain. She opened her eyes slowly, silver orbs scanning the tracks of her veins down her thighs and to her knees. Slowly, she raised her head, scanning the gray of the room for any sign of black.

Blade was in the corner cleaning his knife with a once pristine silk square of cloth that was now dyed red with her blood. "You know," he began, "I was aiming to get a slice in your cheek, add to that fucked up face of yours." He flicked his wrist, sending the remaining blood on the blade flying in glimmering scarlet droplets. "Not my fault your ear happened to be there," he grinned, "but it does tell us something. All of this tells us something."

The sharp plod of formal shoes against concrete pinged around the cell, resonating in an endless and useless battle to escape. She locked eyes, as much as she could, with the prick, glowering at him as he made his way to her, kneeling down so he could meet her eyes. The tip of his blade scraped against her neck.

"A normal street rat, hell, a normal _kid_ would be screaming and crying, begging and pleading with us to believe them. They'd sob," the blade bit a little deeper into her neck, "when they woke, when I cut them, they'd scream and panic and hyperventilate 'till the Grimm came pouring down the streets of Vale. But you," a smirk from Blade, "you've done none of those things."

 _Shit._

His smirk only grew wider when he noticed the almost imperceptible widening of her eyes, the twitching of her lips, the slight swallow of panic born from the fact that she _knew_ she'd messed up and broken her act.

"When I cut your chest, when I kicked your ribs, when James woke you up, you were worried, even a bit scared, but you were never panicked." The blade had reached her windpipe, lightening ever so slightly to make sure it didn't kill her. "That's not normal, _mutt_."

"That tells us that someone, somewhere, trained you to handle pain, stress, and the threat of death pretty well. Throw your unlocked aura into the mix, and suddenly things are looking mighty suspicious. You're not an ordinary street urchin." He grinned, and she paled ever so slightly.

"You're special, kid. And you _were_ there. There's no such thing as chance in my line of work, y'know. Which means you _are_ White Fang. You _are_ a terrorist. You _are_ a criminal." The knife reached the end of her neck, a thin red line of broken skin serving as its footsteps. "I don't care what lies you throw at me, we _will_ get the truth, and you _will_ break."

The knife stopped.

"Do you understand me?"

* * *

Roman Torchwick was having a good day. Not a bad day, not an okay day, a _good_ day. Which meant something was about to come along and ruin that, because something always, _always_ , did.

He took a deep breath, savoring the bitter smoke that filled his lungs before exhaling, cigar tip flaring orange as he did. His hand tightened defensively around Melodic Cudgel, head swiveling distrustfully around the warehouse for whatever-it-was that would foul up his good mood. He'd learned many things in his years of being a thief, a killer, and a damn good scoundrel, but one thing he didn't learn there, that he'd always known, was that Roman Torchwick did _not_ have good days. Roman Torchwick had bad days where shit hadn't yet hit the fan.

He ground his teeth against the harsh cushion of the cigar, lighting up the tip as he exhaled once again.

"Boss," the voice came from behind him, a bass that trembled ever so slightly with fear. He didn't turn, not fully, that would send the wrong message, and staying alive and on top in this world was all about sending the right one. Instead, he tilted his head to the side, smoke from his cigar framing his profile in an appropriately sinister fashion. _Nothing wrong with a little theater._ "We got a total of forty-thousand pounds of dust, only thing we're lacking is ice dust, but security's been amped up a lot, and Atlas has always had a fondne-"

Melodic Cudgel obediently tapped the floor beside him, the sharpness of steel on concrete bringing the grunt's chattering to an instant halt. He sighed. _It's always something…_

"How much Dust are people buying?"

The grunt shifted uncomfortably, smart shoes scuffing themselves against the floor. "A few hundred pounds every day, more for the factories." His voice positively _oozed_ uncertainty.

"So average-Joe-McIdiot is still buying Dust without a care in the world then, right?"

The grunt gave a hesitant nod before remembering that his boss couldn't see it. "Y-yeah, they're still buying it pretty easily."

Roman twirled around, white coattails flapping in the sudden fight between air and cloth. "So then, if people are still buying Dust so easily is our job finished?"

The grunt hesitated, brows knitting together as all two gears in his brain grinded together for what must've been the first time in years. Roman swore you could see the sparks flying out of the idiot's ears.

Roman sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he did. "No. The answer is no, we haven't finished our job. Now go get me a list of warehouses with known ice Dust supplies to hit this week, we need to raise the stakes."

His mouth contorted into a growl at the immediate absence of soles clashing against concrete. "Go on then, shoo," he nudged him with the explosive end of Melodic Cudgel, "get on it, go away, out of my sight, all that jazz."

Roman turned back around, marching on beat with the tapping of his cane on the concrete floor of the warehouse. All other sounds seemed to fade away as his thoughts twisted inwards. They needed to up their game now. No more hitting random dust shops after night, and while it was all well and good at making the average citizen piss their pants exponentially more every time they passed by a broken Dust shop overflowing with pigs that couldn't seem to do a damn thing to stop it, it didn't rack in as much dust as he needed right smiled. It was _very good_ entertainment though.

But they weren't good for the _job_ , and the job always came before entertainment (though, ideally, the two would be one and the same). The distant thud of his locomotion ended as he drew even with the table before him. What little of the steel that wasn't coated in red stained papers was haggard and worn, the entire corner was cramped, framed by interminable steel shelves that towered up into the shadows above the lights.

Melodic Cudgel nestled in its usual corner, snug and cozy between boxes of fire dust that perfectly violated Vale's OSHA regulations. Dots of ash sprinkled from the cigar with every shift of his jaw, smogging the white of the paper with bits of grey and black. Every single one of them were shipping and freight manifests courtesy of Fire Bitch's friends, their smushed and inky characters were shoved together in an almost solid line of blackness.

He growled. The fact that they used more black ink to separate the rows and columns didn't help.

Still, he would make it work.

Sea green eyes continued trailing through the mess of characters, scanning for any irregularities or targets, and ash continued to sprinkle on the papers around him. The smoke buildup, while he didn't notice it, had begun to coalesce into a fog.

The further he read the more he smoked and ground, and the more he smoked and ground the quicker his cigar dwindled. The thing was practically a stub, the table practically an ash tray, before something caught his eye.

Up 'till now the manifests had been consistent, with an average of about seventy-thousand pounds of Dust per warehouse, give or take about twenty-thousand or so. But this one, A688CB as it was called (real creative lot, those Atlesians), had a mere twenty thousand pounds to its, truly tragic, name.

One hand clad in smooth black leather rose to his mouth, split fingers trapping the stub of the cigar in a mobile vice. His eyes roamed upwards, trailing across the worn steel littered in ash and paper before reaching the once soft map of Vale now scarred with imperfect circles and deep gouges from of all kinds of pens.

Warehouse A688CB was nestled in the Southeastern corner of the Industrial District, the tip of an arrowhead of industry that drove itself into the otherwise smooth borders of the Agricultural District. It wasn't on any rivers, wasn't near any docks, wasn't even near a railroad station; whoever had commissioned it had either been incredibly optimistic or incredibly stupid. Or both.

 _Or they have something to hide._

Roman's eyes narrowed, smoke clouding his vision for a millisecond before wafting up into the rafters. Sea green orbs snapped back to the manifest, combing it up and down, flicking up to the map to confirm every warehouse's location, every Dust shop's location, before shooting right back down to the jungle of black ink below him.

His right hand rocketed out, snatching the smooth black steel of Melodic Cudgel and spinning it once before slamming it, and all his weight, onto the floor beneath him. The sound reverberated through the warehouse, meeting everyone's ears and causing their heads to snap to the source almost as quickly as the sound travelled.

A688CB, as his brief investigation had revealed, was unusual. _Very_ unusual. There weren't any methods of delivering freight-level cargo to the place outside of the deteriorating Agri District streets, there wasn't a Dust shop within fifteen miles of the place, and there wasn't another Dust warehouse within fifty miles of the place. In fact, it was the only Dust warehouse in a block dominated by food warehouses. It wasn't licensed to any local development pricks, and its, very small, employee staff consisted entirely of Atlesian citizens or ex-pats.

The slam of his cane on the floor was perfectly synced with the shouting of his voice, the call of "Neo" accented brilliantly by the crack of pure sound.

Not even a second later shattering glass filled the air around him, the unremarkable image to his left of boxes of dust stacked endlessly on uncountable steel shelves splintering and falling to the ground. The pieces met the floor and simply broke, ceasing to be.

Leaning casually against one of the endless steel shelves was a woman who, to those who didn't know her (or were suicidal), could be mistaken for a girl. She was short, the top of her brown and pink hair coming up no higher than his midchest, and, nestled in the crook of her right shoulder, was an intricately decorated parasol with endless scenes depicted in flawless white lace.

She cradled a bowl of ice cream like a mother would her child, the only difference being she was devouring it with a spoon. _No different than a Schnee then, really,_ he smiled, _I am hilarious._

One brown, and the only visible, brow rose in sync with the perfect spoonful of ice cream that she savored. "Warehouse A688CB, Southern Spear of the the Indust District," a wave of his cane. She did not budge, and, he assumed, the brow crept even further upward as well.

The one sea green eye that anyone else could see rolled, a sigh of crushed hopes splitting his lips in a crevice of resignation. " _Fine_ , you can finish your ice cream first. But, after that, I need you to scout that warehouse, it seems like a good place to hit. Small, good for a trial run, and a good way to piss off the mooks over in Atlas, maybe fuck up some relations here in Vale too. If we're lucky." He brought a fresh cigar to his mouth, the grinding slash of steel sounding once, twice, thrice before a flame finally sputtered to life in his hands. The flame was extinguished seconds later with an instinctive flick of the wrist, cutting it off from the outside world in its tiny, steel cage once its job was done.

"Don't get seen," he said through a puff of rancid smoke, "last thing we need is for anyone to send word to the pigs and have an ambush waiting for us on the raid. Just. Scout." He made to turn away, back to the map, back to the corner of dust and smoke and scrawling ledgers, but stopped. "And _try_ not to kill anyone, okay? It's not a raid if everyone's been dead for a week by the time we get there."

She huffed in disappointment, but nodded all the same. Roman Torchwick turned his back on the tiny murderer, and the sound of shattering glass filled the warehouse once again.

He doubted they'd find anything groundbreaking at Warehouse Dumbfuck, but he was curious, Neo was bored, and his men needed to practice.

He exhaled, smoke coalescing into a smoggy trail behind him as he stalked over to the impeccably white couch nestled in the back of the warehouse. His left hand slipped into his coat, leather gripping steel as he pulled a burner scroll from his pocket and opened it.

The screen was emblazoned with the twin crossed axes of the Kingdom of Vale on a background of forest green. He scowled at it, eyes determined to cow the arrogant symbols into submission. Blinking white pixels were poised at the top of the screen: 22:15. _Huh, maybe she's lat-_

The dreaded clinking of her glass heels on concrete shattered his hopes. _Dammit_. "Come Roman. We need to talk."

He breathed deep, relishing in the temporary relief that the cigar and nicotine brought to the crushed remains of his good mood.

He turned, putting on his best faux-smug grin as he did.

"What'd you have in mind?"

* * *

 **A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody! Goddamn, I have been so ridiculously busy these past few weeks since Thanksgiving, hardly had any breathing room at all. But, even with all the insanity and exams and stuff, it's nice to see family and be home again, and it helps that Christmas is my favorite time of year. Something about the snow and how beautiful the tree looks when it's all lit up. Speaking of snow, before I flew out the temperature at school dropped to -43** **o** **Fahrenheit. All other flights got cancelled, so I was just in time.**

 **Anyway, I think this is the first pure setup chapter we've had so far! No fights, no chases, just setup for the next chapter to come, which will be the climax of the first arc of this story (I'm so excited to write it! Hopefully it's actually good.) Speaking of "actually good," this chapter is...** _ **alright**_ **I guess. Not super happy with it, definitely some awkward spots and run-ons (my arch-nemesis), but it's been awhile since I updated, so I felt the need to throw it out there and hope it sticks.**

 **I wanted to write a holiday Omake/Extra for this story, but decided against it; it would reveal too much of the future plot as is. I may write it now and release it further down the line though, who knows? Not I.**

 **Oh, before I go, a word on pairings/romance in this story as that's what many reviews seem to want addressed.** _ **There is no planned pairing for Sanguine,**_ **I repeat,** _ **there is no planned pairing for Sanguine.**_ **I do want there to be a romantic or potentially romantic element to the story (because I'm a sucker for romance), but I** _ **will not force it**_ **. It'll only come about if I genuinely feel like the characters could** _ **actually**_ **develop feelings for each other as the story progresses. That said, this story will not be Rosewick (shoutout to that reviewer that was worried it would be). I got nothin' against the ship itself once Ruby is like 27 or so (even think it's kinda cute then, in a weird sort of way, probably because my girlfriend's parents have a 23 year age gap, fun fact.), but at 15? That's a lil sketch, if not straight up illegal (except in I think Germany, France, the Netherlands, and a few others; those places where the age of consent is 14.) It also won't be an Enabler fic (sorry Enabler fans). I was going to list potential pairing partners, but that would also give too much away, sorry guys and gals. If you guys feel particularly strongly about what pairing you think would aid the story the most then feel free to PM me** **about it or leave a review (whichever you prefer), and we could have a little discussion session on how it could look further down the line.**

 **Have a good one, and stay safe!**


	5. Simple is as Simple Does

Her head was a weight, nothing more. It lolled downwards, her chin pressing into remnants of her collar which crinkled with dried blood. The concrete beneath her was a fuzzy haze courtesy of her half-lidded eyes that couldn't seem to move. The message her eyes sent back to her brain, one of gray mixed with dark crimson, wasn't even disregarded, it was just simply not processed.

It's hard to gauge time when you're trapped in one room with no natural lighting for so long. The only frame of reference for any consistent sort of measurement Ruby had was the pain. Each and every day, at what seemed like the same time (she had no way of telling), Blade would return. Sometimes he would bring a friend, sometimes two, other times it would just be him. He'd come in and cut her up, maybe dope her up with hallucinogens, and ask her questions about the Fang. She gave up on responding a while ago, the answers were never what he wanted anyway.

That only seemed to make him more frustrated.

She breathed, a shuddering and brittle thing that shook her whole mess of a body. Pain came, but she didn't register it. It wasn't that she couldn't feel the pain anymore, a knife in her arm still hurt just as much as it used to, but now, well, she was used to it. It was like child throwing a tantrum, just ignore it and eventually it'll get tired and distracted by something else.

 _Distractions...today...where today?_

Her eyelids drifted shut, but she didn't notice. She'd been to Vale several times, nestled safe in her cargo container or roaming the streets at night with the brisk air on her face. She'd been to Avil, her favorite outlying village, and played tag, hide and seek, and the-floor-is-lava with the children there even more. She'd been wandering in the brilliant sea of whispering red that was Forever Fall, up and down the beach beside the glimmering and crystal sea, she'd nestled in the fork of a tree branch and read her favorite fairy tale, and so so much more. But where today? She wanted it to be somewhere new, with _something_ new.

Her fingers twitched, wrists shifting in a vain effort to find comfort. _Where where where where…_

Footsteps, muted and dull, came from beneath the crack between the floor and the door, both equally colorless.

Her breath caught a little in her throat, eyelids scrunching as she screwed her eyes shut. Places and memories shot through her mind, aimless and desperate escapes that couldn't - _wouldn't_ \- stick.

The footsteps were closer, joined with a voice that was equal parts anger and desperation in its muffled tone. "The girlf...Msihtah Schwee...dauggtere aht Beacon...plannings somefing."

It didn't make sense, didn't understand, didn't _get it_ , - the cut of steel as her wrists weakly writhed - what do they _want?_

Her body shook with exertion as she struggled to do something, _anything._ Soft, crimson bolts flitted across her wounds, ceasing the bleeding just enough to keep her alive, but not enough to stop new ones. Never enough.

The door slammed open, faster than it ever had before. Steel slammed into concrete, flecks of gray shooting off like shrapnel into the corners; it hurt to focus on them.

"Tell me! Tell me what the Fang is planning, I _know_ you know something! You have to! Tell me what they're planning!" The volume hurt, the face before her blaring and gnashing weaved in and out of focus despite her best efforts. A rock to the jaw and her vision went white for a split second, and when it returned the face was gone, replaced with crimson-stained gray and a roughness against her cheek. "I've had enough of your _fucking_ silence, mongrel." His face was a snarl, but the only thing she noticed were his teeth, bright and shining with unnatural polish. She felt her mouth move and her throat hum, but it was distant.

"Your teef are vewy white," she didn't hear that her speech was slurred as much as she felt it. Felt the lips and tongue flop and fail to form motions that had been drilled into her subconscious; it was incorrect.

The man before her screamed, ignorant of her brain's vehement protests as he did. This wasn't right, this had never happened before.

A shining black shoe met her stomach with a crunch. She gurgled in pain and surprise before something slammed into her cheek and cut off her vision. Blow after blow rained down on her, but she'd stopped counting their number and caring of their origin. This was wrong, there were no questions, no demands, only an animal whose sole purpose was to harm her.

The pain melded together into one giant and solid ache that permeated her form. She didn't even register that it stopped until the door slammed shut once again.

The floor was nice. So nice. So warm and comforting and soft. She liked the floor. She didn't like the door, or the men who came through it.

She hated them.

Her eyes, already almost swollen shut, drifted closed.

* * *

Harsh light always made for a rude awakening, and today was no different. The darkness of her eyelids was twisted and ineffective, a pale shadow of what it was at night. She was awake, but she didn't want to open her eyes, not yet.

The pain had receded, once again, to the back of her mind. A dim awareness instead of an overpowering presence. That was good. _Better,_ she corrected herself. She wanted to stay there, to roll back over into the blissful embrace of unconsciousness, but the light, and the harsh betrayal of her concrete bed barred her way back.

With a mewl of protest her eyes creaked open. The first thing she saw was whiteness, the blinding light of that _stupid,_ ever-on dustlamp. Her arm instinctively went to try and block the light as her eyes blinked staccato, but the bite of steel around her wrists stopped them dead. She was on her side, arms still bent and bound behind her back. The concrete was cold and rough, much rougher than it had been when she'd fallen asleep. Her eyes and all the focus she could muster drifted towards the grey door before her. No footsteps came, no voices sounded, the world beyond the door was utterly silent. A sigh slipped from her mouth.

Her temporary safety assured, the attention she held on the door dissipated throughout the room with a scanning of silver eyes, and a faint thud in her head instead of an overpowering bass. The same walls with a new crack, the same floor with a new glint, the same camera with the same red light, the same door with a few new scuffs, and the same stains with the same, crimson shade.

Her head met the floor with a gentle thump, thoughts returning to - _wait_. _Glint._

Her head, as much as it could, snapped back up. Silver eyes searching and matching the glint of metal against the floor before her.

There, gleaming tauntingly on the cement, was a tie clip.

It's a testament to the beating she took that she managed to examine the perfectly bent steel completely before she finally thought _I could use that._

However, it's a testament to, if not her spirit than her endurance, that, despite everything she'd been through, she managed to damn near pounce on the thing with her outstretched feet. Flesh fought against concrete as dragged the steel ever closer to her hands, and when it finally got there, her hands were trembling from excitement.

There was scarcely any coherent sentences going through her mind, no "this is it," or anything like that. No, she was consumed with pure excitement. She didn't even have an escape plan.

But she did have a lockpick, she did have her wit, and, most of all, she had her will.

Her eyes didn't leave the door for the entire duration of her attempted escape, her breaths were shallow and feverish, her fingers, even though they were doing incredibly important work, still _somehow_ twitched. _Shakier than the night of my first outing_. _Is that bad?_

She didn't really know.

What she did know was that the gentle clicking clack of the lock releasing its cutting grip around her wrists was the sweetest thing she'd heard since Summer's lullabies.

It was amazing how the body adapted. How the body, or the mind, forgets out of necessity or convenience what it _feels_ like to be free; like socks or leggings that're just a little _too_ tight, but that you never realize until they come off and a sigh you didn't realize you were holding slips out. The day at the square, the day after Nix, seemed like an eternity ago to her; the concrete, the harsh white of the dustlamp, the cut of the steel, it felt like she'd lived here for years.

Her legs trembled like leaves in the wind as she got to her feet. Black flecks of dried blood mixed with scarlet droplets in their race to the floor. Her legs sobbed from joy and protest, and each step she took towards that glowing grey door was almost a stumble. She slammed against the wall shoulder first, vision see-sawing and head pounding. She screwed her eyes shut and gripped her shoulder, nails digging into the skin there. One deep breath, two, three, eyes open, four, five, sway off the wall. Fingers around the door handle, the cold steel sending splinters of adrenaline through her veins.

The door, despite its size, was balanced; it swung easily, and, more importantly, quietly on its hinges leading her into an open hallway. The ceiling above was almost modern: steel beams, nude save for their fireproofing, crisscrossed not six feet higher than her head, wiring, ducts, light fixtures, fire safety mechanisms, all of them were plain and bare above her. The floor was more of the same concrete, though now polished to a gleaming stain, that stretched for almost forty feet before another, lighter, steel door led out into parts unknown. Incredibly thin, almost cardboard walls lined the hall on either side, with holes that spilled unfiltered light through windows onto fragile doors on wooden frames.

 _Now for the hard part._

Her movements were practiced, and, while they were jerkier and less refined with all her wounds, aches, and limp, they still (grudgingly) granted her silence. _First window, five feet, left side._ She inched towards it, heart beating a surprisingly steady pace as she did. Her body flattened against the wall to its left, mind racing to weigh options. There was no cover in the hallway, but she also had no idea what lay in each of the rooms. Would it really be worth it to crawl under all the windows only to have the door at the end of the tunnel slam open and leave her trapped in an area that she had zero knowledge of? No, better to take a look.

She also may or may not have been really _really_ curious.

Luckily, there wasn't a gun barrel staring her down the second she looked, in fact, the room was completely empty of any humans or faunus. A sigh of relief. Instead of people, the room was filled with all sorts of super-advanced dust machinery that was waaaaay behind her expertise. Special microscopes, giant tubes and beakers, a massive square of steel that filled the room with a gentle hum as its lights blinked blue, green, and yellow. _Huh,_ she thought, slipping past the empty machinery room as quietly as possible, _glowy._

Another glance to the steel portal at the end of the hallway, just to make sure. She inched ever further down the hallway, slapping down the complaints of her body as she did. With the same caution she peeked inside. Another empty room, though this one was filled with desks that were shoved to the side to make space for one giant table clogged with dirty dishes and surrounded by rolly office chairs that she had to stop herself from taking a joyride in.

The next room was a kitchen, the room after that a supplies storage area filled with everything from canned food to mops; all of them were empty of people, and still the door hadn't opened. _Two left_.

Calloused feet padded silently across polished concrete as lances of pain speared her body at each step, bringing her closer to the final, left-side door. In the back of her clouded mind she noticed that there was no window for this one, and that the door seemed heavier than the planks that blocked everything else on this hallway. But her mind was scrambled, disoriented. Unable or unwilling to process every little detail like it should, _like it used to._

The metal of the handle clicked in refusal as she touched it. _Locked._ A frown wrinkled her face, eyes flicking up from the knob to the door, and narrowing in an attempt to glare through the steel that blocked her way. _Only locked door,_ she glanced at the heavy steel that ended the hallway to her right, _closest one to everyone else's access._ There was really only one thing it could be, especially when it was locked so close to her. _Weapons. Or high grade Dust. Or both._ She hummed softly, _hopefully both._

 _And wouldn't that make getting out a lot easier._ She grinned lopsidedly, a hint of viciousness sparkling in her eyes. _Make some other things easier as well._

She just needed a key.

Her back detached from the the wall with a lot less grace than she was used to as her body shifted to the only other door on the hallway that she hadn't opened. Unlike the Armory door (as she was calling it now) this one was ultra light wood of the type that are always accidentally slammed. Her fingers wrapped around the doorknob, twisting at a speed that, if she were a kid again, would've been agonizingly slow.

She'd stopped breathing, her breath held down by adrenaline. She'd done similar things before, infiltration and stuff, but it was never her strong suit, and she never enjoyed it.

As the door divulged more of the room behind it, her breath began to escape in ever softer tones. So far it seemed to be a bedroom or barracks, lined with cots and crammed with lockers, but it was empty.

A laugh shattered the silence and stopped her heart in its uneven tracks.

She waited.

And waited.

Another laugh from her right, deeper this time, but still the same voice. Silver eyes peeked around the gray of steel where they found a single, half dressed man sat on a cot. He was hunched over something, headphones in his ears as he giggled away at a private world she couldn't see or hear. She scanned the room again, and again. _Just the one,_ her eyes met the thin cotton of his undershirt, the skin beneath was olive and sunburnt, but nothing noteworthy.

 _Doesn't look armed. Can't see his hands though. Gotta be about 6'1",_ she scanned the room again. _How to take you out quietly…_

Any one of the footlockers scattered around the room might hold her answer, but the man could turn around at any minute, his video ceased, and there was no guarantee whatever they held inside was quiet. No, she'd have to go searching. The door had the courtesy to shut silently behind her, the knob shifting into place as slowly as physically possible.

She moved back down the hallway with urgency, but not panic, the adrenaline that coursed through her numbing the pain and focusing her mind. Each door opening was silent, each search fast, but thorough enough. There were options: a collection of rusted pipes (which she took to with glee), some forks, a butter knife, but nothing she'd bet her life on. Not yet.

It was the second to last room before her cell that finally granted her reprieve. Nestled in the back left corner beside a stack of cardboard boxes and underneath a broom, was a four-foot length chain of industrial steel. _Hey handsome,_ she thought, fingers grasping the base and wrapping a foot of it around her right forearm, _am I glad to see you._

She couldn't stop the smile that spread.

Her nerves began to eat at her when she was halfway to the barracks door, the pipe in her hand and the chain balled around her fist shaking ever so slightly. She hadn't been gone long, but there was no telling what the man could've done since then. _Hopefully he'll still be watching his scroll._

There was a second of indecision once her hand reached the knob: bet that he was waiting for her and throw it open for some extra surprise, or hope he was still oblivious and open it as gently as possible so as to preserve her stealth? _Can't afford to lose the element of surprise, not with only a chain and one way out._

The door squeaked once as she pushed it open, but was otherwise silent. Her attention shot to the cot where the man had been, and found it, thankfully, still occupied.

The concrete was cold, it sapped the warmth from her feet like ice, and it didn't help that they had the AC on full blast in here. Each step was measured, her every movement (besides the involuntary winces of pain) was calculated.

Fifteen feet.

Laughter erupted from his lips like lava from a volcano, his shoulders shook and rattled as spittle dotted the floor beneath him.

Ten feet.

The pipe in her left hand twitched, and the ball of chain morphed into a noose.

Five feet.

Her breathing slowed to a crawl, her heart forced to follow suit.

The man's mouth opened for a laugh that never came.

She swung the steel noose above his head and beneath it in one motion, yanking back and twisting the chain around his neck for all she was worth. A split second later the pipe came down on the man's skull with a crack of steel and a flare of grey. He gargled in surprise, scroll slipping to the floor and cracking. Again the pipe came down, again, again, again, again. Olive hands clawed away reflexively at the chain hoping to block the pain, but he couldn't see it. Her arm switched, from overhead to the side, the pipe smashing into his temple with a mewl of grey. He gurgled, she grunted, the steel sang, and his aura shattered.

Two more strikes and he stopped moving, and another two left a dent in his skull and blood leaking from his ears and nose. But she couldn't afford to stop, she had to be sure.

Hands gripped both sides of his skull and twisted, and the man's neck broke with a wet snap.

She eased his body back down on the cot as gently as she could, and not just to minimize noise.

This was the reason she hated stealth and infiltration. "Removing" targets with aura quickly and quietly was a lecture in the utmost brutality. It was the only way to bypass the soul in a timely manner.

Her breathing was heavy, and her fingers still trembled from adrenaline. The chain in her grasp jingled merrily and without rhythm.

A deep breath fixed those problems.

She twirled the chain back around her forearm with a flick of her wrist, balling what remained around her knuckles.

She spared a glance at the man's face as she leaned downwards to rifle through his pockets. He didn't seem much older than her, ten years at the most. His eyes were sea-green and bugged out of their sockets, staring blankly at the bare ceiling. _Nothing in the right pocket_. A scar traced it's way up from his lip and to his cheekbone, and his face was freshly shaved with specks of pearly aftershave still clinging to it. _Just a knife and wallet in the left._ She flipped him over, silently grateful to not have his face staring at her.

The right back pocket was empty yet again, as was the left one. Her lips came together in a thin line of red, eyes tracing over to the locker that was at the foot of his cot. Steel surrendered to her with a squeak of rusted hinges, revealing the glorious haul of a folded button down, slacks, and polished black dress shoes. She sighed.

 _If I had a key, where would I put it..._ not the locker, or his pockets, but it would almost certainly be on his person _somewhere,_ right?

She gave his body another once over, even checking in the waistband, but still there was nothing.

Her hand found its way into the greasy mess of knots and tangles that was her hair, fingers scratching her scalp. She'd missed something. She had to have. It must've been staring her right in the face…

A soft vibration from the floor and her head snapped to the left, pipe forward in her left hand. It was a message. A text message on the man's cracked scroll.

"I am such an idiot," she muttered, palms massaging her eyes as she did.

The message was from someone named Len, though she had no idea if that was a man's or woman's name, the message was clearly...explicit in its meaning for the brief amount of time it was on screen. She couldn't find it in her to be disgusted however.

 _Thank Dust he didn't lock it, would've been such a waste._

Her fingers danced along the touchscreen, brows furrowed and tongue peeking out between her lips in concentration as she attempted to ignore the pounding in her head and focus on the Scroll. So it'd been awhile since she'd last used a scroll, so the design of the Operating Whatever-it-was was different, she could still find...whatever it exactly _was_ she was looking for.

Couldn't she?

Swipe. _Nothing._ Swipe, swipe click. _Nothing._ Swipe click click click. _You are not playing fair, Mr. Key._

It was two minutes later (as the handy-dandy scroll clock told her) that she gave up on actually _finding_ anything in the scroll. But that didn't mean that the uncooperative freakin' thing _wasn't_ what she was looking for. It had to be.

She palmed it and marched out (silently), glaring at the cracked device as she did. The door to the armory was the same as when she left it, and, on closer inspection, didn't have a physical keyhole, but instead a black scanner with a glaring red eye pointed straight at her.

Her head cocked to the side, "how did I not notice you…"

The bad guys must've shaken things around up there more than she thought they had.

The scanner beeped against the screen of the scroll, the light shifting to a permissive green as a bolt behind the steel clanked back with the solidity of hydraulics. Her body shook, the constant throb of pain pushed to the recesses of her mind by the, now very real, possibility of escape. And maybe some revenge.

Her shadow stretched across the floor, the inky wisps of red-black hair skimming the bottom of the shelf opposite the door. It was packed with military-grade dust rounds and ultra-pure AAA-grade power dust. A rack to her right was lined with the standard model S-13c Atlesian dust rifle, but they were painted a menacing black with a glimmering snowflake emblazoned on the stock. Her breath quickened, a smile lighting up the dark. _This'll do._

Fifteen minutes later she was sporting an S-13c slung across her back, three AH (Anti-Humanoid, Anti-Grimm grenades almost looked like mini artillery shells) fire-dust grenades, one AH lightning-dust grenade, three extra magazines of normal dust ammunition, a bandolier of the more exciting rounds, and the same trusty chain. She'd also snagged the smallest shirt she could find (which was still three sizes too big) from the barracks and a pair of black slacks that had to be rolled up four times before the cuff began to hover above - instead of scrape across - the ground.

The white of her smile was almost as bright as the dustlamps as she dashed down the hallway and into the storage room, digging for the duct tape she'd seen earlier. Her plan was a simple, but dangerous one. Still bare feet padded back across the concrete and brought her inside the armory. Dust, especially the highly purified power kind, was notoriously unstable, but that was the whole point after all: maximum power output with minimum energy input. Metal shook as fingers rummaged, grabbing a fistful of fire crystals in their porcelain grip. But, for far from the first time, the instability of dust would work in her favor. Adhesive and plastic scratched against her tongue as her canines cut off a foot of tape. Her plan was risky and brash, and if it went wrong it would turn the whole block into a melted crater. "It'll go right," she whispered, fingers taping the third fire dust crystal on the back of the door handle, "you'll get it done, guys. I know you will."

She stood, slacks scraping concrete as she gave her IED (Improvised Explosive Door) one last check up. She couldn't help but smile, palm patting the dust crystals snuggled together in a blanket of adhesive.

She slipped back inside the armory and braced the rifle against her shoulder, lining up the iron sights with cans of aftershave dawdling about on the cots. She exhaled twice without realizing it, the sway, already slight, almost ceased to be. The rifle belched.

One shot and the shattering of glass, two shots and the splintering of plywood, three shots and the door slammed closed.

She dropped the rifle, the strap swinging it down and across her chest with a wisp of trailing smoke. Her scroll met the scanner, and the hydraulics of the lock whirred and clanked.

She waited, back touching silk touching concrete.

A breath. Two. Sweat slithered down her body and clung to the wall; clumps of hair hung like pinestraw in her vision, dividing it differently every time her head moved. Her breathing was shallow, her eyes attempting to tunnel through steel.

Glass crinkled outside the door, slipping from where she'd broken it and striking the ground like a petulant child, but there was no other noise.

One minute.

 _Maybe they didn't-_

She could've blinked and missed it. A split second ago the door was in its frame, now it was buried in the floor like a throwing knife. Tongues of flame lapped greedily at the sudden hole, orange, yellow, and red all mixing in a cacophonic orchestra. The concrete she rested on cracked, chips peppering her neck, shoulders, and scalp like a thousand tiny wasps. Her eyes snapped shut instinctively, shielding them from the wall of heat that would've overwhelmed them, but turned her mouth into a desert.

And the _roar._ It filled her body, filled her soul, reverberating through her mind in an endless and chaotic barrage of undulating bass. But, somehow, she remained standing.

As quick as it came, the roar vanished, and the ground ceased to shake. Her eyes snapped open immediately, body already on the move as she turned, barrel first, out the door.

The hallway, walls, and steel door were no more, in their place were smoldering bits of wood, melted sheets of metal and plastic, and raging fires. Cinders and sparks glimmered in the thick smoke like fireflies, a glowing white and orange.

She could hear moans from the shattered hole that used to house the door, shouts and expletives joined them soon after. Feet shuffled on the other end of the portal, and her hand moved towards one of the FD Grenades at her belt. In one motion she shouldered the S-13c and yanked the pin from the red branded cylinder.

It tore through the wall of smoke, a swirling hole of black and cinders in its wake. Concrete bit her shoulder as she ducked back inside the storage room. _Clank, tink,_ \- "Hey, " - a cough - "what's-" _boom._

The interesting thing about grenades, in contrast to what civilians thought at least, was that they were never a "ball o' fire," type of explosive, not even the fire Dust ones. Its explosion was not a loud and throbbing thunk like a bomb, but something far briefer and higher in pitch. But that was never the terrifying part. The truly terrifying part about any fragmentation grenade was the chorus of tiny collisions as tens of thousands of razor sharp shards whistled through the air and smashed against solid surfaces.

The second the last piece of shrapnel pinged she tore out of the room. The wall of implacable black was now a haze of grey thanks to the concussive force of the grenade, and everything she saw was framed behind ironsights.

Man with no head or arm below the elbow, _not a threat,_ her brain said.

Bisected man, _not a threat_.

Motionless flaming body twenty feet ahead, _not a threat._

She stepped through the shattered frame and into the main warehouse as blackness swooshed behind her.

A wail to her left begged for her attention. The S-13c barked four times in response.

A shout from her right, followed by a string of curses as she swiveled.

Four men, two wounded, one tending to them, one with a hand spelunking the depths of his jacket.

Seven bullets smashed into the digging-man's skull, his aura breaking in flash of cyan on the third. He died the instant his aura did. Flesh met the cement with a wet thunk as her barrel swiveled to the man attending the wounded, a thin coil of smoke marking its path.

His skin was as dark as his suit, his hair clipped short, and his eyes were a royal purple. A burn scar poked just barely above his soot stained collar, and his hands were stained bright red and high in the air, palms out and fingers spread like a living stop sign.

Her finger hesitated.

 _Medic maybe? Or maybe they all have training?_

The iron sights were between his eyes.

 _They hurt me. They_ tortured _me_. _A quick death is more than they deserve._

Her brow furrowed, but the sights did not move.

 _I've never seen him before though, he never hurt me. I think._

All it would take was a twitch of her finger.

 _He might still be armed, he could kill me the second I turn around, and I wouldn't even see it coming._

Her index finger was completely rigid, and it seemed like even the crackling of the fires had died down.

 _He's surrendering. He's not hurting me._

Her teeth were grinding and her jaw was locked.

 _But he could._

Silver eyes met purple, then drifted to the crimson chests of the men beside him that rose and fell in ragged spasms.

 _Anyone could hurt me, but not everyone does._

Her finger and shoulders relaxed as a breath burst from her mouth. She wouldn't kill him, not right now, not like this.

Bare feet stepped to the side, callouses scratching and catching on tiny craters from specks of shrapnel that still sizzled. The man nodded a quick thanks and moved his full attention back to the injured men, her presence forgotten, but still she kept her rifle trained on his back as she crept to the exit, if only for her own comfort.

The whole building was silent, yet not. There was no chatter or talking, no clicking or banging of machinery, and no hissing or other equally dangerous sounds indicating dust about to blow. Instead the building was filled with the snapping of small fires and smoldering wood, the groans of cooling steel, and the uneven breaths of wounded men.

It did _not_ put her at ease.

Her head pivoted, checking the distance between her and the exit. She was _so close_ , thirty feet at most _._

The medic was still tending to the wounded, his back to her. Red hands dashed from one body to the other, bandaging and cutting and pressing.

Something creaked behind her, and her brain defaulted to her semblance.

Tiny vestiges of aura flared, silver eyes found their destination behind a shelf of steel and dust while her feet slammed against the floor. But she was drained. She was hurt, hungry, and tired. The only energy she had was pure adrenaline, and that wasn't enough.

Her soul was ragged, her aura taxed, and it took too long to activate.

Something slammed into her shoulder as the world went red. It was wrong. The red was twisted and warped, dull and exhausted and so very _very_ tired.

The world rocketed back into existence with a blossom of pain. A strangled gasp of surprise tearing through at its handshake from Nowhere Land. One foot landed, but the next caught, and she began to tumble.

The warehouse was flipping, a rolling menagerie of grey on grey on blinding lights teetering above her. It would've been fun if the concrete was replaced with grass, the dust lamps replaced with the Sun, and the corrugated roof replaced with clear blue sky. But they weren't, and it _hurt_.

She was pretty sure her body had stopped rolling, but the world just went on and on. Burning lamps singing a twisted melody alongside the shelves of dust that surrounded her. She willed her left arm to rise, but all it did was flop. _It would be so easy,_ she thought, _so easy to just stop._ The discordance bounced in her head, warbling, trilling, caressing. Her vision lolled to the side, tunnelling down the aisle of shouting shelves and back to the smoldering plywood of the back wall. She giggled, or maybe she didn't?

Something wet oozed from her throbbing shoulder, warming the insatiable concrete beneath her. _Get up._ _ **Get up.**_

" _Get up!"_

She blinked, and Yang was above her. Golden ocean sparkling against the baby blue and cloudless sky. The screaming lights turned to chirping birds, and the harsh mantle of concrete was replaced with flowing grass.

 _I don't want to, Yang. I want to stay. Let me stay._

The brawler's hands found her hips, and her head cocked to the side, that familiar smirk plastered to her face. "You can't lay here forever, Rubes. What about dinner?" The smile twisted. "What about being a Huntress?"

Ruby felt her face scowl. _I don't want to be one. I don't need to be one._

The warmth of the sun vanished, Yang's form covering her in shadow. Her face was twisted with anger, "so you're just gonna give up, huh? Give up and lie here?"

Rage lept to the forefront of Ruby's mind, incoherent and consuming. _You and Dad would know all about giving up, wouldn't you?_

Yang crouched over her with Ember Celica deployed, the red of its shells matching its owner's eyes. "Must run in the family then. Pathetic."

Ruby snarled and forced herself to lean up, muscles sore and screaming. The birdsong had shifted to a keening wail, the grass' caress became a bed of nails, and the sky bubbled a sickly green.

 _You have no right to lecture me!_

"Lecture?" One second Yang's foot was still, the next her cheek ached and blood filled her mouth. "I'm not going to lecture you, _Rubes_ ," her pet name twisted Yang's face into a rictus of disgust. "I'm a much more _active_ teacher." The blonde towering above her grinned, the chorus of her knuckles somehow louder than the chaos around them.

Her vision exploded, lips dribbling with blood. A hammer of flesh slammed into her wounded shoulder. The grass beneath her scraped along the inside of the wound, and she cried out.

The sky swam, and her eyes clenched shut, flashes of pain erupting with the blaze that consumed her sister's fists and mind.

Golden red in a flourish of flaming flesh that singed her skin. A punch to her breast, her bloodied shoulder again, her nose; she wouldn't stop. Trembling hands that quaked with each blow shook towards her chest.

 _Wiry arms and tousled blond pigtails, 'Hothead is my middle name!'_

Her hand quaked on its path.

' _My Little Dragon,' his voice was husk, 'you're so much like your mother.'_

Fingers clung to the grenade at her hip.

' _Look Rubes, my hair is on fire!'_

She punched her, thumb pulling the pin as she rammed it home into her skirt pocket.

 _Arms so warm and strong she never wanted to leave; a fire fueled by love._

Liquid dripped down her cheeks, tasting of salt and copper. Sound ripped through her throat as her forehead met Yang's nose.

' _I got ya, sis, I got ya. It'll all be okay now.'_

The little strength she had left coursed through her legs like lightning, the limbs coiling underneath her sister's chest like a cobra.

And she pushed.

Brilliant golden hair trailed through the air like a flare, its wake a burning soul. Ash gray grass embraced it, pulling the form tight to its breast. Gold shifted to a primal orange and red in an instant, the force of the explosion launching blades of gray that whistled a deadly melody.

The sky flickered between clouds and girders, the stars multiplying and dividing again and again. She blinked, silver eyes shrouded for one, two, three seconds before she found the energy to open them again. Sometimes the floor was grass, sometimes concrete, either way it ate at her.

She lay there, staring straight up at the sky/ceiling that _definitely_ shouldn't have been swimming the way it was. _You need to get moving_. It really was gorgeous, all the lamps in the sky - _you'll die if you stare here you_ _ **have**_ _to move -_ and how they giggled and sang. Or was it her giggling?

She didn't know.

The lamps were beautiful.

* * *

Roman Torchwick liked simple. He liked simple goons because they were easy to replace and didn't want much pay, he liked simple decor because otherwise things got too loud and your eyeballs were fucked by seven different colors that screamed at you like crazed kids, and he liked simple women (it was just too bad none of them existed).

Yes, Roman Torchwick really had a thing for simple.

The pyre of SDC Warehouse A688CB was anything but simple.

He glared at the lazily drifting form of Neo as she met the ground next to him, compressing her parasol with a click and a flourish of lace, but her only response was to raise her palms in the most sincere 'don't-look-at-me' he'd ever seen from the woman. The clink of his lighter met the tip of the cigar he didn't even realize he'd been chewing.

Deep breath, count to three. One, two, th-

"Will _someone_ tell me why the warehouse is on _fire_?!"

Okay, so maybe the deep breaths didn't always help.

The blank stares, savage grins, and disgustingly _dumbfounded_ shrugs of his new Mutt associates were equally unhelpful. His gloved fingers met the bridge of his nose, and, for one glorious second, he allowed himself to relish the sickly sweet root of the cigar.

He'd left them alone for _ten minutes_ because Fire Bitch wanted to make a last minute adjustment to their future plans. A ten minute head start from the base. _Ten. Minutes._

"I don't even know why I bother," he growled, shielding himself from the stupidity of Faunus behind a black leather glove.

Another deep breath of cigar. Green eyes met idly curious pink and brown ones. "None of them did this, did they?"

She shook her head.

"Did _anyone_ go inside?"

Another shake. Plus one sigh from himself.

"So the whole place just," he gestured sarcastically to the flames before them, "spontaneously combusted?"

Another shake of the head, followed by a pantomimed parasol gun, and a finger towards the warehouse.

His eyebrows knitted together, Melodic Cudgel meeting the tarmac with a solid thump as he leant against it. "Shots from inside, but nobody went in." Well, nobody Neo saw, but that was almost as good as a guarantee that no one had been even near the warehouse for the past few hours. Neo may not have liked observation duty, but she understood its importance, and she was the only one he really trusted with the job.

His eyes flicked over the warehouse, roaming for any clues as to what might've happened. It wasn't a terrible loss, or even a loss at all really. He'd like to have a place to run some easy missions and get officially underwhelmed by his Faunus mooks, but that could wait a week or two. The Dust haul wasn't going to be anything spectacular either and, functionally, blowing up the Dust and stealing it served the same purpose of denying the citizens of Vale its use.

Still, he'd like to know _why_.

But sometimes, he knew, shit just happened.

He drew a deep breath of cigar, ready to order the mutts to pack up and get back to the Bullheads before the cops could get here. His cane was raised high in the air, but fell not a second later, sights thumping up from the bottom as he observed a figure stumble out of the haze of smoke and fire.

She was a tiny thing, only a little taller than Neo, with a lithe build. And holy hell was she beat to crap. Her left arm was almost limp, the wrist twisted at what was definitely a broken angle. Her button-up was shredded, burned, and bloodstained, and her slacks were more holes than cloth. Dull streaks of red aura trudged across her body, the light they bled into the smoke sad and weary. Her movements were more lurching and barely controlled falls than coherent steps, and her head was locked towards the ground through it all, every bit of her energy focused on the spot her foot would go.

The sound of fourteen dust rifles chambering rounds almost simultaneously was the only way that she even noticed something was up. She stopped dead, straining for something more, as if she wasn't sure if she'd imagined the sound or not and needed _confirmation_. Finally, her head fought to rise, and green eyes met, for the first time in his infamous life, silver; the only bright thing that wasn't blood on her form. They held contact for all of two seconds, and he still wasn't sure if she knew he was there.

Her mouth opened, globs of blood dripping down her chin and onto the pavement. He could tell it moved, but whatever she said, if it was even intelligible, was lost to the crackle of the flames behind her.

The figure's knees gave way a millisecond later, her form careening towards the ground on her side; the plopping she made on the ground barely grazed his ears.

Why could nothing be simple?

* * *

 **Hey guys, been awhile hasn't it? Sorry about the wait for this chapter, things were just absolutely crazy: dying laptops, the holidays, relapsing sister (stay away from hardcore drugs kids), family emergency after family emergency, and so much work. Barely had anytime to catch my breath. The ADHD didn't help either, whenever I could focus enough to write (due to meds) I had work, and whenever I was free enough to write I couldn't focus. The most annoying freakin' cycle.**

 **Anyway, this chapter was...interesting. Kind of the commitment point for the story, and, while I knew where I wanted to go, it took me a while to iron out how to get there in this chapter. Let me know what y'all think about it, it's definitely not perfect after all, and** _ **all**_ **feedback is welcome (from writing criticisms to simple questions about future events; just hearing from you guys always brightens my day).**

 **As a side note, (and to get feedback from you guys) I'm having some trouble deciding what to do with team RWBY. As some might've guessed, Ruby will not be a part of team RWBY at Beacon (not that she's never going there, that she won't be on team RWBY for reasons that will be revealed later) and I was wondering if y'all would prefer me to keep it as a three person team WBY, or transfer some characters around (like maybe move someone from CFVY down a year, move someone introduced in Vol. 3 to Beacon, etc). I put a poll up on my profile for easy responses. Let me know what you guys think, be it through poll or review!**

 **Be safe out there, and have a good one!**

 ** **March 31st, 2017 editing notes: reread the chapter on a whim and holy god that opening Roman bit just looks gross on desktop, so many single sentences, ew. Fixed that. Also changed a word or two here and there to avoid repeats.****

 ** **April 20th, 2017 editing notes: fixed up some more stuff that was bothering me, mostly mechanics and word choice stuff. Nothing huge. Chapter Six is almost done too! I know the wait's been long, but it's a crazy time of the year at college; it doesn't help that Six is basically two chapters in one since I didn't want to split it up.****


	6. With Friends Like These

Everything hurt. Pain set a deep beat against the drum of her forehead, resonating through her body with every pulse of her heart. Some parts burned more than others: her head, shoulder, wrist, chest, but every nerve still winced to the tempo of her blood.

Light filtered in through stuttering eyelids, searing the pupils behind them. The world was pure and burning white at first, but slowly, steadily, it faded to splinters. Someone was above her, a blurry, amorphous form of shadow that shifted in a permanently out-of-focus state. Voices pecked against her ears in chirping tones, needles of sound that pierced through the fog of her mind with unintelligible words.

Her vocal chords rumbled, twisted by her reluctant throat and warped by her protesting mouth. The shadow shifted, the white of the room blocked by the haze of grey and black above her. Something touched her arm, a warmth with a worn texture that pinned the limb to something so unbelievably soft that she couldn't find it in herself to resist.

White returned with the delicacy of a bomb, detonating across her left eye in a shockwave of spears. Her eyelid fought to close instinctively, but something held it back. She sighed when it left, only to flinch again when the same thing happened on the other side of her face, leaving her to blink the shifting stains of purple, yellow, red, blue, and green out of her vision with lackluster coordination.

"Conscious definitely, though she shouldn't be," a voice scraped out above her, the shadow bobbing as it spoke. "Give her another dose to put her under."

Under? Under what? She was on top of a bed, and the shadow was on top of her, what was she supposed to go under? The blanket, the shadow...the...the blanket...was soft…

The light was fading, the shadow above her gorging itself on the room. Why? Why why why? What do shadows do? Would it be-be be bee bee buzz buzz bzzzzz hahahahaha.

Why couldn't she think?

* * *

The first thing that she felt was comfortable. Something soft and warm held her close, but its whispers were indistinct and cloudy.

She liked it. It reminded her of snuggling up with mom after nightmares. A wiggle and a shake had her burrowed in the thing, and whatever it was it didn't seem to mind.

Time didn't really matter, and she didn't really care. Ruby was lost, lost in thought, lost in the caress of the warmth that so gently entombed her, lost in the serenity around her. Her eyes hadn't even opened.

She tried to go back to sleep, she really did. She yanked the cover over her head, deployed herself fully inside the cocoon, let the heat of everything fill her body, but, try as she might, she just couldn't shut off her brain.

 _Room-check, you need to do a room check. Get up._ She curled tighter, attempting to drown out her sense with comfort and fluff.

It didn't work.

The gentle whisper of the covers shifted to a panicked shout as they were launched through the air in a whirl of cloth and frustration. Silver eyes inspected the room around her with suspicion, her muscles taut and coiled in case any threats materialized. A machine showing her heartrate beeped in tandem with the drip-drip-drip of a fluid IV next to it. Stiff bandages of cloth bent and warped all across her body as she twisted mechanically to observe the room.

It was unremarkable, white tile lined with grey clashed in contest of who could be the most boring. Bland lights bounced off the bland floor and somehow made it all look even worse. Drab didn't seem to cover it.

She hmph-ed and dropped off the bed; the freezing tile ate at her bare feet and the chill of the room bit through her patient gown, but she shoved it down. The IV slid from her veins with a tug, and a bolt of red flicked across her skin and sealed the dot shut, leaving only a speck of blood behind. _Aura's up. That's definitely good._ The underwear she wore wasn't hers, it was too clean, too whole, too new, but that probably didn't bother her as much as it should given how it _actually fit her_. A quick pat down of her body, _still kinda weird though_.

Another step had her emerge from the curtained area where she'd laid, and a quick scan confirmed her original thought and satisfied her paranoia. She was the only living thing in the room that was for sure, and the only other sounds came from the machines behind her. _But,_ she thought, eyes narrowing at the blinking crimson light above, _I'm not technically alone._ Silver orbs traced along the canals of grout in the tile until they found the door again. Her feet padded a steady tune as she made her way towards it. _You're probably locked, aren't you?_

A yank, a click, and a frown. Sometimes she really did hate being right.

Hair shuffled into her vision with more than enough momentum, the knotted strands splitting the camera into thirds. "Well? Don't you have questions? Favors? Gotta want something, right?"

The light continued its blinking, the embodiment of impassive.

Knuckles wrapped equally in callouses and bandages met the wood of the door four times, the resonance solid and deliberate. "Hello?"

There was no response.

A growl followed by a silent thank you to her aura that she could actually control those damn muscles this time around. _They'll have to come through at some point. Probably police,_ her hands clamped onto white cloth as she clambered back into the bed, her eyes flicking to the bandages that clad her form. _Got to be police. Who else would put that much effort into doctoring?_

It would also explain the solitary confinement, however long that would last.

Her feet kicked back and forth aimlessly as her thoughts turned inward. _Gotta have a story. Might think I'm a terrorist at worst, and an arsonist at best._ Sharp eyes traced the maze of grout and tile. _Defense. Self-defense maybe?_ Frowns of brow and lip creased her face. _How much do they even know?_

Had they found the rifle? Had the camera footage been destroyed in the fire? Could they identify the bodies? If they had, could they link those to her?

Her feet kicked faster.

What about her semblance? She used it only once (that she could remember), but did she leave anything from it behind? Did the fire burn the petals? Surely they didn't have any fingerprints or DNA of hers from older targets, right? Fingertips threatened to slice through the cotton beneath them, her pale knuckles whitening even more. If they did, would they even think to cross-reference it with some random street-rat's? _No way. There's no way they would_. Her eyes flitted back up to the interminably blinking crimson light. _Right?_

Hair flickered across her vision as she shook her head. _They wouldn't, pigs aren't that smart. Even if they did it wouldn't be too hard to escape._ Sure, it'd mean using her semblance and exposing her full face to the police, but...okay, when put like that it sounded a lot worse. _But,_ she assured herself, _it's an option, especially when they patched me up._

She would have to thank them for that, maybe draw someth - _focus, damnit. What do they have?_ They must've...must've had something...

But what if they didn't?

Her lips twitched, a ghost of a smile flickering on her face. What could they have? What if she was just an injured orphan found on an abandoned dock? Maybe the bullet was from the warehouse fire, but could one kid really do all that? And why would the Schnees even be holding a fifteen year old girl? It was much more likely a gang - maybe the Fang - had snatched her off the street and used her for target practice. It wasn't unheard of after all.

But then who was she claiming to be? Who-

A click as loud as a gunshot to her left. She wasn't honestly sure if the next few cracks came from the door or her neck as it snapped towards the portal. Muscles contracted all across her form as her movement screeched to halt. Her knuckles were almost as white as the sheets they clenched.

The man that walked through was not who she expected. He wasn't a pig, and definitely wasn't a detective or interrogator - his posture was far too relaxed. In fact, he was a doctor, a big city Valean doctor if stereotypes were anything to go by, and the first one she'd ever seen. His hair was more grey than blond, his skin free of even the smallest blemish, and yet her eyes were locked on the Dolex watch on his wrist, ticking a beat faster than her heart as he approached.

"Frankly, I'm surprised you're awake so early," he said, teeth so polished they damn near blinded her when he spoke, "my daughter - here, look at me please -" a hand grabbed her eyelid a second before light scalded her pupil. "My daughter's about your age, and she never gets up before ten if she can help it."

"Say 'ah.' There you go." A chortle from the depths of his throat, "why, if my Elena had the wounds you did -" the sheets groaned below her - "she wouldn't get up before, well, ever!" A bellowing laugh as her eyes narrowed. _I don't like you._

A clipboard slipped out from the depths of his lab coat as a pen ticked to life in his right hand. "The power of the soul is truly a remarkable thing; one that I rarely get to see in person." She opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it. "None of my clients have an unlocked aura, why would they need it in Vale after all? Why, I think the last time I saw it in action was in a nothing-town on the border of the Wildlands. Part of my fellowship, helping Hunters on the fringes of society. A disgusting place, they didn't even have paving, let alone separate housing for Faunus and Humans!"

Lines of disgust crinkled her face, and the pen found itself poking her nose. "The formation of scar tissue with aura is particularly interesting in and of itself, you know. And you have so many, based on what I've seen of you during the operation."

 _Operation?!_

"It's a fascinating and delicate process, why -"

" - are you still talking about it, Doctor Claughlin?" a voice purred from the door, and, while grey-blond and red-black heads swiveled, one face was wrought from fear and the other from curiosity.

Doctor Claughlin's blue eyes were wide and sprinting, a brittle laugh gargled in his mouth, "I-I was just explaining -"

"Bothering," the raven-haired woman corrected.

The Doctor coughed once, twice, a wrinkled finger worming its way into his collar. "I'll uh, I...I beleive she is in perfect health," an orb scanned the cloth that decorated her wounds. "Well, almost in perfect health. Remarkably close really."

"That's -" _clack_ " - good -" _clack_ "- news," she said, each word punctuated by the sauntering impacts of glass heels on the tile floor. One perfect hand ( _why did everyone here have such good skin?!)_ rested on Ruby's shoulder, and she suppressed the wince that rose in her stomach at the contact. The amount of people touching her in the past week…well, it was less outside her comfort _zone_ and more outside her comfort _country_. "We wouldn't the girl we saved to suffer from any permanent injuries, isn't that right, Doctor?

A gentle warmth crept into her left shoulder, relaxing and loosening as it spread across her back and soothed knots she didn't even know she had. A sigh slipped unbidden from her mouth.

"Absolutely," Claughlin replied, voice becoming steadier as he got back into talking, "not that there was ever any real risk of that with her level of injuries, aura, and my presence." The hand slid from her shoulder. "Bypassing aura's properties is a simple matter after all," smugness oozed from his words, as thick and clingy as oil. "If you know the tricks that is. It all relies on -" His words died in his throat as the hand grazed his cheek, prowling upwards to his ear.

"Your presence here is no longer required, Doctor. It would be best for you to make yourself scarce." The man flinched and withdrew from her, a bright pink patch of flesh hissing on his cheek.

His steps were quick, each clack clack clack solid before, "oh, and Doctor," an about face, and then silence. "Remember to not breath a word of this to anyone; I'm sure there are wounds that even your ego can't heal."

Blue eyes wide as the ocean, and a gulp that had no right to be as loud as it did. Doctor Claughlin's cottontail whipped as he fled the room.

Silver eyes drifted to the red clad woman with raven hair as the door slammed shut. She'd never really thought the "perfect body" actually existed ("Everyone's beautiful in their own way," Summer would always say.), but this woman probably had the closest that anyone could hope to achieve. And, based on the flourishing hips and the way the red silk of her dress clung to her form like Ruby did to her babies, the woman knew it.

Neither of them spoke, the woman content with silence while Ruby's fingers fidgeted with the sheets beneath her. What did she say? Should she wait? Was she waiting for her to break the ice? Why was that always the expression?

The brush of cloth against the ridges of her fingers sped up alongside her breathing. She'd never been good at this, it was partly why she loved her weapons so, the other part being that they were _awesome_.

"Soooo," _who said that? Did I say that?_ "I um, like your heels?" _That wasn't a question, me! Statements are not questions! Ask her who she is!_

Eyes flickering with fire and amusement shifted towards her, and Ruby's muscles stiffened at the causal analysis as they roved up and down her form.

The woman smiled, but her teeth did not show. "Thank you." Her voice was as silky as the dress that hugged her, yet orders of magnitude more firm. "I made them myself." Ruby's eyes lit up. "But, now that that buffoon is gone, I believe introductions are in order, don't you agree?"

Black and red locks chittered as they bounced up and down, but only silence followed. Why was she staring at her like that? Did she have something on her face? Did sh- "Oh! I-I'm sorry about that, I, uh," a nervous laugh as her hand dove into the forest of grease that was her hair. "I'm-"

 _Wait. What are you doing?!_

"I'm…"

The silence rose alongside Dress' eyebrows, as raven as the hair on her head.

"I'm Beryl. Beryl Scarlet." Her voice had dropped to a murmur, eyes scanning the sheets beneath her for imperfections that her fingers could occupy themselves with. _Nice. Real convincing performance._

 _Click_ "Now now, 'Beryl'," _clack._ "We need to trust each -" _click_ "- other, don't we?" A shuffle as cotton met silk, and the woman's hand met her chin.

Her gaze was forced gently, yet firmly, upward, and into the blazing orange of this mystery model. She hesitated for a second before nodding, the woman's gaze allowing nothing less. "Then why don't you tell me your _real_ name, hm?"

Ice clogged her throat as her mind raced a million thoughts per second, all of them consisting solely of "shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit."

A hand, unusually warm and soft, brushed the hair from her frozen statue of a face, "it's the least you owe us after saving your life, isn't it?"

Well, the woman had a point there. She definitely owed them...something. _There are worse things you could give for repayment_ , true. _There are also better things though, like a flower, or a good batch of strawberries._ Though, based on how much work it must be to maintain that form, she didn't think Dress would appreciate the sweets.

 _What if she's a cop?_ Probably not the case (probably being the key word); after all, what kind of cop dressed like that on duty? But...well, she'd been wrong before.

 _It's not that bad a deal…_

"Ruby." The unconscious gnawing of lip stopped, "My name's Ruby." _Rose._

A smile, this time accompanied by gleaming teeth polished to a shine, "No surname?"

Her heart quickened ever so slightly, "No. Just Ruby." A pause. "I never knew my parents," she lied, hoping that would explain all her problems away.

Warm breath danced across her collar as Dress exhaled, sending the hairs there shooting towards the sky. "I see." There was something in Dress' voice, a quiet resignation, but something else too that she couldn't quite place.

"My name is Cinder Fall, and I have an...offer for you."

Cloth and paper fought as Ruby leaned forward, brows knit together as she spoke, "an offer?"

"Yes," Dre- _Cinder_ said, fiery eyes drifting back to lock with silver. "One I think you'll enjoy very much. Your life wasn't saved because of altruism, Ruby." A laugh as her eyes plodded to each of Ruby's doctored wounds in turn. There were many. "That would be far too expensive. It was saved because you have potential, potential we want to use for our cause, _Thorn_."

Ruby Rose had developed several contingencies while in Vale, and all of them were in case she was confronted by someone that knew about her tendency to help the city after hours. They ranged from running full tilt outside The Wall to straight up killing the person. She'd gone over them mentally a hundred times, so she was pretty sure she was ready in case the situation ever arose.

Turns out, she wasn't.

Everything about Ruby Rose simply ceased. For one second she was a statue, her breath, heart, and thoughts frozen in time. The only movement about her was the blood draining from her face, turning her already pale complexion into milk.

Then, she exploded.

Thoughts whirled through her mind with abandon, uncaring about both origin and destination. Adrenaline shot through her body like lightning, filling her muscles and nerves with energy, sensation, and an awareness so sharp it almost stung. The bones in her knuckles nearly breached her skin, the highways of her ligaments cutting troughs in the skin. Her throat constricted again and again as her eyes flicked from the threat before her to the door a mere ten feet from the bed.

 _I could make that. Totally. Completely. Absolutely._

Silver flicked to fire made flesh, and the anticipation they held within.

 _Right?_

Her mouth moved to speak, but no sound came. _Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit_ , a swallow and a second try. "W-who?" _Very convincing, me!_

A real, genuine smile erupted on the woman's face, a quick exhale from her nostrils the only audible sound of amusement. "Thorn. The," burning orange drifted up to her hair, "infamous assassin that's been all over Vale this past year." The gaze returned to her own, and she barely suppressed the flinch within her. " _You've_ been all over Vale this past year."

She made to respond, but the words were stillborn in her throat, clogging and dead. Cinder Fall rose to circle her, lithe and graceful like a shark. "You'd be amazed what simply knowing the area can do to change an outcome. Take your...incarceration for example." Gold-trimmed red bloomed against white as Cinder about-faced towards her, a swish of air the only sound the dress made; the only eye that Ruby could see was alight with satisfaction. "There was an interesting video lying amongst the pyre of that warehouse. You told the Schnee men where you lived -" _what?!_ "-, or near enough. They tried to find it," Cinder shrugged, "but they didn't really believe you in the first place. Their idiocy didn't help."

 _Click._ "But not us." _Clack_ , "We know this city -" _click_ "you and I, and I know others," _click_ "who are even more -" _clack_ "- intimately acquainted with its underbelly." The droning of heels ceased, cut off by the roaring of blood in her ears as the woman stood beside, and yet so incredibly above her. "Finding your shack, because that's what it is, was child's play."

 _Too close, too close, too close, where's her other hand?!_

A surprise grip on her left shoulder was met with a wince, but a warmth that was _definitely_ not there before drowned the pain away.

 _Found the hand…_

"And once we found that, well, did you really expect someone who had gone that far to _not_ find your weapons? Your," her lipstick, a wet pink, glistened in amusement as a smirk blossomed, "'armor?' And, most intriguing of all, your book?"

She was screwed. Abso- _fricking_ -lutely _screwed_. Of course she'd never made any real attempt to actually _hide_ her gear, who would go searching on a derelict dock for a child-turned-assassin?! Who _did_ that?

 _Who_ does _that?! How did_ you _not expect it?! Of course this was going to happen! Just look at your luck so far, you idiot; this was guaranteed! Stupid stupid stupid stupid._

She didn't think idiot was a strong enough term for this mistake, but, as frustratingly _obvious_ as it was, dwelling on her stupidity wasn't going to help her current situation. _ScrewedVille, you mean._

What...what was she supposed to say to that? She _might've_ been able pass off the weapons as 'oh yeah, just found these on the ground one day was gonna sell them at market tomorrow,' but her _book_?! Sketches of kills, memories, dreams, gear, future weapon schematics (the most therapeutic of all), what was she supposed to say about _that_?!

The soft, white fabric offered no answer.

 _There's really only one way out of this, isn't there?_

"What do you want with me," she murmured, words curt and terse as her lips clipped each syllable with the precision of an automated assembly line. The hand on her shoulder tightened gently, and, though she couldn't see Cinder's face, she could _hear_ the smile in her tone.

"We want your skills, Thorn. We want _you_ , Ruby."

"You want me to kill for you," she stated, a hint of disgust worming into her voice. Her gaze found Cinder's, and both were unyielding. "I don't kill for lien." It was a fact. It was a line she wouldn't cross.

Cinder's smile widened, the corners of her lips grazing the fire in her eyes. "What about for a cause?"

 _A cause?_ She frowned, _that...that...that would still be mercenary work, wouldn't it?_ Her nails ticked as they scraped against each other, teeth chewing thoughtfully on her lip. _Do I kill for a cause now? I kill people who deserve it. I help. But...is that a cause?_ She'd never really thought about it before now; _odd, considering how important of a distinction it is_.

"If it's a good one," she replied, thoughts still puzzling over her own motivations.

A delicate chuckle from above her as tiny quakes played through Cinder's shoulders. "And what makes a cause 'good' to you?"

She frowned. _Good question._

A hand moved to fidget some more with the blanket between her legs as her focus shifted to the introspective. "Helping people," her words were an anvil, her thoughts a hammer, and both worked together to craft her justification. "Killing people who hurt innocents for no reason," _did that include border towns?_ "Lots of people," she amended, _but is one life worth more than another?_ "Or...maybe not." Her tongue peeked out from the blanket of her lips, "killing those who hurt people for their own gain often," she finalized. _Good, one part down._ "And without hurting people, human or faunus, that don't deserve it." _End goal?_ "To make things better for everyone." A pause as her brows kneeled at a fresh thought. "Everyone that's not dead."

A flick of raven hair brushed her peripherals, "all good goals," the woman mused, a ghost of a smile on her lips. "And all goals that you and I share." The words cut through the haze of her moral debate like a Beowulf's claw. "We want to change the world, starting with Vale. Purge the idiotic and greedy buffoons that hold back society. The abusive police officers, the corrupt Council, the racists, the censors of the truth." Cinder's eyes met Ruby's, and she could swear they were glowing. "Those idle fools who stand by and let it all happen. We want to change them, change everything."

That...that sounded really damn good actually, but there was one problem…

"Change it into what?" Her thumbs' idle twiddling had ceased. "And how?"

Cinder hummed, one finger rising to the perfect pink of her lips as her eyes focused on a point far, far away. "Into something better. Where no one will have to worry about getting extorted by officers who claim to protect them. Where no one will know the pain of having a family member disappear because they were asking too many questions about Council coverups. Where no one need fret more about being killed by another human more than being killed by a Grimm. As for the how," her gaze was nothing short of blazing, a boiling sea of ambition that pinned Ruby to the edge of her seat. "By any means necessary."

Was it just her, or were the lights harsher than they had been? The covers confining, a stuffy net of cotton that tangled and trapped her; her skin was clammy.

A hand caressed her shoulder, and the warmth returned, spreading through her body with a tingle of heat that was far too perfect. _Definitely not natural, fire related semblance maybe?_

"But with _your_ help," Cinder purred, "we _will_ be able to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed. Your skills, anonymity, reputation, and...precision will open many, many doors for us. For Vale." Her voice was low and soft, but as certain as The Wall guarding this city. "For the people."

A new Vale...wasn't that what she had been fighting for all this time? She'd thrown herself into the task of helping the city, of cleansing it, but was that ever something she was _really_ going to accomplish on her own? It seemed that no matter how many gangers, corrupt officials, and twisted pigs she killed another would take their place before the body was even cold. She'd given it her everything, fixing Vale was her _life_. Had she changed anything at all?

The fact that she even had to ask proved a lackluster answer.

But now the resources - the _opportunity_ \- to fix Vale was right in front of her, wheeled out on a gleaming silver tray and side by side with a helping of vengeance. All she had to do was swallow her pride and accept that she couldn't fix a kingdom alone.

Was that really so bad? Was her pride really worth the continued suffering of innocents under a rotten government?

She knew the answer before the question was ever asked.

"Alright," she said, the cotton she'd almost stared a hole through whispered a stuffy thank you as she exhaled, "I'll help you."

It was what she did, after all, what she loved. Helping people.

* * *

She still couldn't believe it. Of all the crazy, expensive, and unexpected lengths this group had gone to to save her, to _help_ her, this was the one that left her mind a smoldering crater of shock.

Someone had _washed_ her clothes.

Washed. Her. Clothes.

And not just the combat gear and cloak, oh no; someone had washed _all_ of her clothes. She just...didn't know what to do with that.

She wasn't a Grimm, she washed her wardrobe, but it had always seemed like a waste of time, time she could put to better use observing a target or earning some extra lien. Cleaning her combat gear was always a top priority after a mission obviously, but her everyday begging wardrobe? Not a chance.

"Is it really that remarkable?" Cinder's voice was as clear as the clink of her heels, yet her volume could almost be called soft. The only eye that Ruby could see studied her fingers meticulously, one pitch black eyebrow arched towards the ceiling.

Ruby just barely managed to tear her mind away from the nonexistent creases in her clothes; some had been there so long that she almost considered them friends in their own right. "Is what so remarkable?"

Though her mind had (reluctantly) shifted towards the woman beside her, her fingers refused to let go of the still-warm cloth that she wore. A small, irrational part of her was afraid that if she let go then she wouldn't feel truly clean clothes again for months.

"Your clothes, or the state of them." The eyebrow crept higher.

"Oh. No...nah, of course not."

Milky hands continued to fondle the fabric they clung to, and Cinder's eyebrow almost seemed to vanish into her bangs.

"Maybe a lil' bit," she mumbled sheepishly, "cleaning my gear was just always more important." _Bloodstains grease stains. Evidence = jail time._ "Everything is - _was_ \- more important really, and the laundromat once a month worked well enough." Sure, they always stank of mildew when they came from the washer and she might've had to end the dryer eight minutes early so they didn't catch fire ( _Your sacrifice will not be forgotten Polka-Socks.)_ , but it worked.

A glance at Cinder told her that she didn't share the same opinion.

She wasn't sure if she should be embarrassed or mad; embarrassed about her lifestyle, or mad that Cinder was judging her for it. Embarrassment won out in the end as her eyes flicked to study the suddenly _extremely_ interesting walls. White plaster covered in a steel rainbow of pipes. Truly fascinating.

"So," she almost coughed, "how many of you are there?" _Good! Good, very good subject change._

"Enough."

 _Oooooor not._ She understood that these… revolutionaries? Rebels? Extremist political faction? Whatever they were, if they wanted to, and actually thought they _could_ reshape Vale...well, there had to be a fair amount of them. _Or very powerful allies_ , she mused.

Based on what Cinder had said she doubted they had any friends among Vale's elite, so contacts on the inside weren't likely. _Good, they'd be hypocrites otherwise._ So the allies had to be on the outside, but also powerful enough to have the ability to support the rebirth of a Kingdom. _Another Kingdom then?_ Probably not. Most of the other Kingdoms were even worse than Vale, especially Atlas and Mistral. Vacuo was as close as it came to good, but it was still a shit hole. None of them would support a revolution in the current world order.

 _Then who?_

"Here we are." Ruby's eyes refocused, scanning the door that Cinder gestured to. _So, this is it_. It was definitely a door, steel in color and make; nothing else stood out about it. _Could probably puncture it with my rifle,_ her hand gripped the frigid metal and twisted. The door was about an inch and a half thick - _fire precaution -_ , but other than that wouldn't provide any trouble for her ranged baby. Her lips quirked upward, _not much really could._

The room that the door protected was, well, it was something. It looked like someone had taken a normal house layout, stuck it inside a fully stocked Combat Gym, shoved both underground, removed all but three walls, and replaced practically every surface that wasn't a bed with...was that _glass?!_

Ruby Rose was _not_ an interior designer, make no mistake about that, but with that much glass she wasn't sure if the breaker or designer held the responsibility for broken things. A frown born of accounting creased her face once she saw the - also glass - chairs. This place had to be _expensive_. _And not just because breaking probably happens as often as breathing._

She had to admit though, the way the light kaleidoscoped at every bend and corner in the crystal before her really was breathtaking. If impractical and expensive.

Shuffling and unknown voices cracked out from the back right corner the room, the only area that seemed to have any walls or rooms.

"Now, I know you _love_ my current pair," said one, a smooth bass with a drawl formed solely from confidence, "but they get a little musty after a good session, so I want to grab one of these two. What do you think?"

"They're _exactly_ the same." Higher pitched and tighter, and with spiked syllables in every word.

"I'm thinking the black ones too, babe." She could _hear_ the smirk. "They really bring out my eyes."

"Alright," mystery-girl's tone said _anything_ but, "how about you bend over and we can test out the fit, _babe_?"

Ruby's feet shifted, kicking across the concrete floor in a vain effort to keep her body's energy somewhat occupied while the vicious bickering continued. _Note to self: do not be unconscious for more than a day;_ really, the energy she had was ridiculous, even for her. It was bubbling over into near constant fidgeting, something that hadn't happened for years. Or was that her nerves?

"They sound...," _vicious? Cruel? Like they_ hate _each other?_ "Fun?" She cast an uncertain glance towards Cinder, whose eye was currently blazing. The voices…well, it was less an argument and more an attempt to skin the other alive with nothing but words.

The woman beside her simply sighed, one finger reflected in a fractal of red, gold, and flesh in the table to the left. "There's food in the cabinets," she said, heels clanking out a funeral tune as she stalked down the room. "Help yourself to whatever you like."

Silver eyes traced the woman's steps as she left before roving over to the "kitchen." Summer had always told her it was impolite to take food as a guest unless it was being forced down her throat. After all, people said things they didn't mean all the time, especially when it came to manners.

Speaking of which, _am I a guest? I said I'd help them, but will I be living here?_ If she was then she had a feeling they'd end up replacing this glass a lot more often. _But_ _I wouldn't_ technically _be a guest._

Her stomach roared, sending shivers and cramps lancing up and down her body.

 _Yeah. Definitely not a guest._

Her legs and stomach were vicious and desperate, barely restrained by the sense in her mind. It was with monumental effort that she managed to keep her pace to a walk towards the food, the growls of her gut providing the worst kind of ambience.

The endless cabinets may have mocked her for the first two tries, but on the the third, that third beautiful tip-toe, they were hers. And, more importantly, so was the food within. She didn't even look at what was inside, she simply swept an arm through and caught everything in the basket of her shirt. _Baggy clothes win again, world!_

One 'hup' later and she sat on the most perfect throne in the history of thrones: the counter (she'd probably shatter the glass table, and that wouldn't be the best first impression). A wiggle, then two, but her butt still complained. _Okay, maybe not the best material,_ one hand shot out to the right and grabbed a bundle that she didn't even bother to read. _But definitely the best offerings._

Righty went spelunking in a well of beautiful, blissful plastic. She wasn't exactly sure what flavor the chips were, but they had a sweetness that was almost perfectly balanced by the smallest hint of spice.

"What complaints have you brought your queen today, Sir Chipton?" The chip bowed low, the crystals sprinkled upon it glittering in the light.

"My lady," came the gravelly response, "A troop of bandits has been ransacking the outer villages. Permission to lead a taskforce to destroy them?"

Her head dipped slowly in the most elegant nod she could muster, her face was a mask of mocking formality, but her eyes were brimming with joy. "Of course, Sir Chipton, be sure to send the villagers my regards."

The next five or ten bags of food (how else was she supposed to keep track of time?) went by in a blur of flavors and crunches, each delicious in their own special way. Every bag had a citizen with a request, and she, being the benevolent and just Queen of Snacks that she was, granted them all.

It was in the middle of the eleventh citizen's request that voices began to prick the edges of her hearing. It was also, on a _totally and completely_ unrelated note, when she processed the _mountain_ of discarded snack bags around her. _Oh. Oh no._ It may have been almost ten years, but Ruby could still see the disappointed look scrawled across Summer's face as clear as she could her own reflection.

Plastic scraped against her sternum and neck as she hefted the evidence in both arms. They crinkled in the wind as her body whipped around. _Trashcan,_ her eyes were as cavernous as the bags she gripped, _where are you?!_

The air around her cracked and filled with petals, and a millisecond later her head simply appeared around the edge of the counter, her mouth split in a triumphant smile. One that died immediately. _Okay,_ she scanned the rest of the kitchen, eyes interrogating every nook and cranny, but, if the trashcan was here, the kitchen would not give it up.

 _If I were a trashcan where would I hide?_ (Did trashcans hide?)

Not by the edge of the counter, not by the door, not by the table, that just left...her eyes widened. _The cabinets_.

A mewl dribbled out from her mouth. Along with maybe a chip bit. _Why me?_

The footsteps were growing louder.

 _Think. You're in a kitchen, doing kitcheny things. I've got eggshells, vegetable skins. Where would be the easiest spot to -_ "the sink!" Another crack of air and gale of petals had her standing at the impeccably chrome basin, one hand locked around a rung that would've shattered were it made of glass. _Like everything else here._

The footsteps were almost right on top of her.

A growl shredded her lips as she practically ripped the cabinet open, thanking whatever gods were (poorly) watching over her for letting the trashcan be here. "Found ya," she whispered, shoving the bags, and half her arm, down to hell.

"Ruby, I would like -" _SLAM._

The group that rounded the corner froze. Two pairs of eyes scanned the petals that definitely, _totally_ did not litter the kitchen floor, while the third fiery pair roamed the posing assassin before them all.

Her smile was strained, but no less endless as she forced her entire frame against the drawer of the trashcan in the most casual lean she could.

A tumbleweed of petals blew by.

She gave 'em the ol' finger gun. _Utterly casual. Nothing to see here. Nothing special._ Salt trickled down her brow and across her nose. _Nope nope nope ignore the petals, everything is normal._

The boy in silver picked a petal off the floor, twisting it between thumb and forefinger. "So," his mane of steel-grey rotated with its base to scan the maybe, slightly, _kinda_ red kitchen, "you usually mark your territory like this?"

"Nope! I usually just sort of ooze out y'know?" _What are you doing._ "N-not that I'm _claiming_ this, no that'd-that'd be _silly._ It's the kitchen, right? Can't claim the kitchen, people need that to cook, and I'm not even sure" - _oh gods please stop_ \- "where I'll be sleeping or if this is just a tour of the base or -" her mouth had the mercy to slam shut.

The eyes of the group before her did not show the same kindness.

Spittle and air clashed in her throat as she cleared it. "I...I don't normally do this, no." Blood crept into her cheeks, dying them a pink that seemed almost crimson against her porcelain skin. "I'm Ruby," she offered, one hand stretched towards the silver boy while the other twitched idly at her side.

Gray eyes traced along the hand, up her arm, and met her silver with a spark of amusement.

For a second, she thought he wouldn't take it.

"Mercury Black. Nice to finally meet the one behind those kills." Teeth split his mouth, and a spike of disappointment dashed through her mind at the lack of gray there. "They could've been cleaner, but they were all good enough. Fun to watch the cops scramble around trying to find ya too."

Work, she could do work. 'Talk business?' That didn't seem like the right phrase...shop! That was it, talk _shop_.

"It was even more fun to run from them. Still not sure if it's more satisfying to give them the slip or never have them on my case in the first place though."

Mercury smirked, "I know a few ways we could test that out."

Mint hair mixed with brown and white in flurry of movement on her peripherals. "You planning on getting yourself caught again, Mercury?" The words were playful, but a hint of unfiltered acid lingered just beneath their surface. "Maybe I should just leave you in lockup if you're just gonna keep running back to it."

"I don't know, you seemed to _love_ the full body search last time."

"Not as much as you liked that cavity search."

Red eyes _\- black hair, flask, smug smile; blond hair, hug, warmth -_ traced her form when they found her, the frown on her face deepening with each hair she saw. "Emerald Sustrai," she said, hands affixed to her hips, "good to meet you."

"Y-you too," she managed to force out between the sudden brick of her lips. _Red eyes, red eyes, red eyes re-_ "So! That...that was you guys I heard?"

Four raised eyebrows.

Laughter, strained and high bubbled from her mouth, uninvited. "Y'know: 'raaawr, I'm gonna shove stuff up your butt!'"

The eyebrows crept even higher, and all the blood in her face plummeted to her feet. "N-not like that! I think. No! I mean, the argument! There was shouting and-and sarcasm, and I'm pretty sure flirti-" the red eyes glinted "- or not. Not works."

Skin entwined with cloth as her fidgeting intensified. "There was a fight though. Guessing that was you two. Right?"

Mercury's face, for the first time in the thirty seconds she'd known him, was more white than grey with the smile he wore. Emerald...Emerald wasn't quite there.

Delicate, creamy skin garbed in red and gold draped over their shoulders. "That was Emerald and Mercury you heard, yes," Cinder spoke, her smile a perfect pink with not a tooth to be seen. "They can be confrontational, but both are quite good at what they do."

Silver eyes lit up like spotlights, "what do they do?" _Was that rude to ask Cinder and not them?_ She cringed ever so slightly, _probably._

Cinder's smile didn't falter. "Emerald is our resident...people person. She's quite good at getting others to do what we need. Mercury...well, Mercury and you share a very similar role."

Ruby couldn't help but beam at the only male in the room. "I'm an assassin," he replied.

Is that what she was too? She'd never really put a name to the job before, it was just...what she did. It was there. She helped people, did what nobody else would do. _Don't get paid though,_ she thought. Is an assassin only an assassin if she gets paid? _No, it's more about the action isn't it?_

Was she an assassin?

"Oh," _huh_. "Cool." _Cool? Really? Couldn't have said_ anything _else?!_

"Complications have arisen that make it impossible for Mercury to fill that role, however." Cinder gave him a look that she couldn't really interpret. It looked like...disappointment mixed with something like satisfaction. Weird. "You'll be 'picking up the slack' as some would say."

 _Oh._ "Okay. Soooooo, when do I -"

"Get your first assignment?"

Ruby nodded.

"When you feel like you've recovered," the woman said, straightening up and smiling, "you'll be heading out quite soon after, so I would make sure you are _actually_ recovered before coming to me. Mercury and Emerald will help you with both of those tasks."

In a single step Cinder had turned, whisking petals up into the air from her minute vortex. "I have to meet with our associates; Emerald and Mercury," the two teens (she assumed, they looked like teens at least. _Maybe_ twenties?) went rigid at the the mention of their names, "do _try_ not to drive our new member away with your _incessant_ bickering, hm?" Then the door clicked shut, and the three were left alone.

Quiet reigned between them once Cinder had gone, quiet that gnawed away at Ruby's nerves like a hundred rats. "So," the pair's gaze drifted to meet her own, and she couldn't stifle the nervous smile that peeked out from her lips. "Um, what now?"

* * *

 **A/N: Hello boys and girls, good to see y'all again! Sorry about the wait for this chapter, it was the end of the semester, so all my writing time had turned to studying time. This chapter has been about 1000 words away from completion for** _ **at least**_ **a month, but I just never had the opportunity to finish it, so it just sat there. Taunting me.**

 **I did get the chance to do the (less arduous) task of revising previous chapters even more though in terms of word use, grammar, and sentence structure, especially Chapter One! Definitely happy about that because One was reeeaaaal sloppy. I mean, it's still sloppy, but at least it's not vomit anymore. Also, by the time I publish this, Chapter Two will have also gotten a good ol' polishing as well! Didn't want to publish this chapter until I refined Two more.**

 **I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter. I've been writing it for so long that I'm not sure if it actually does justice to the characters and dialogue, or if I just slammed some stuff on the page and was like "there! Done! Finally! Now I can move the hell on with the story!" I'll leave that up to you guys in terms of discretion, and, if you don't think it's not that great, I'll definitely give it a rewrite! Just lemme know what y'all think!**

 **Real quick I'm gonna give some of my thoughts on Ruby's character and her behavior and why I think she's acting the way she is in this story. Ruby is definitely not the model of innocence that she is Canon Vol. 1 right now, but, that said, she's not a jaded, pessimistic, drunk either. She's a kid, her decision making skills aren't fully developed, her social skills are lackluster compared to even people of her own age group, and, while she can chat someone up to get them to give her some money, forming bonds with people is something she hasn't had to practice in a long,** _ **long**_ **time. She's more cynical, more angry (at "the elite"™, the police, structural oppression, herself, Hunters [we'll get into that later in the story], Grimm, etc), and more willing to go out of her way to do whatever it takes, but she's still Ruby Rose. She still wants, and loves, to help people, she's still idealistic, she still hopes, and she still sees the best in people by default (usually). She's got plenty of issues, but none of those wash out her dream of changing the world "for the better," just open up new paths for her to get there.**

 **Anyway, with that out of the way, some hints at the goings-on of the next chapter! We'll be getting some more views of what exactly is different with everything and everyone from canon so far and our first non-Ruby POV (a familiar one that I'm** _ **super**_ **excited to write!). On top of all that, now that college is out for the summer, I'll definitely have more time to write, so definitely expect Chapter Seven much sooner than usual! Have a good one, and stay safe out there, y'all!**


	7. Solum Vindicta

Right hook - _thuft._

Double jab left - _thuft thuft -_ , elbow - _pufft_.

Spin dodge left into axe kick - _thunk._

Step into guard, right uppercut - _thunk -_ follow through into double fisted slam - _thunk_.

Headbutt - _pffft -,_ right knee twice - _thuft thuft_ -, duck behind right, grapple.

Mix-up. Repeat.

 _Thuft thuft, thunk, pufft pufft thunk, thuft._

Deep breath.

 _Thuft thunk, pufft thuft pufft, thunk thuft thunk thunk._

Again.

 _Thuft thuft thuft thunk, pufft thunk pufft thuft, thuft thuft thunk._

 _Again._

 _Pufft pufft thunk, thuft thunk thunk pufft, pufft pufft thuft._

 _ **Again.**_

 _Thunk thunk thunk -_ breathe - _thuft pufft pufft thuft thunk_ \- breathe - _thunk thuft pufft thunk -_ breathe - _**thunk.**_

Drenched clumps of golden hair spiraled in her peripherals. Sweat, glimmering drops of rainbows, dripped to the stainless white floor beneath. Even more of the stuff glistened between the leather of the punching bag and the flushed red of her forehead.

 _Breathe._

She might as well have surfaced from a pool she was so wet. Her formerly bright yellow sports bra was a dull gold with that familiar lingering grey of soaked clothes; her workout shorts fared better in the aesthetics department (though they were equally soaked), probably because of their jet black nature. Yang didn't mind the sensation, she never really had.

Combat Gym 23 was empty. No weights clanked into place, no shouts of encouragement from friends were heard, no toilets flushed, and no showers ran.

It was just her, the punching bag, and the sound of her breathing.

It was nice.

Labored breaths steadied before she pushed off her improvised cushion; her muscles protested, but she steadfastly ignored them. Lefty creaked over to snatch her water bottle, upending the stuff into her mouth as Righty grabbed her bag. _Shower_ , _shower, shower_ , was the only thought she had enough energy to have.

Sneakers plodded along pure white tile, her body threatening to teeter over with every lurching step towards the female showers. The gym around her wasn't that different from a high end civvie gym really, the only things that made it a "Combat Gym" were the specialized weapon training rooms, practice ranges, and sparring circles, but each was encased in so much glass as to make you feel like a goldfish whenever you went inside. One of the reasons she was here so late. _Would be wasting time otherwise too._

A glance to her right at the wall of black speckled with the distant, burning yellow-white of the Vale skyline told her it was late. She didn't really care to find out _how_ late though, too sore.

She flopped against the door to the bathroom, forcing it open bodily for her arms' sake. Just as expected, it was completely empty, the only sound being the drip-drip of an absentminded faucet.

Rubber soles cracked across the tile in a painful chord that bit at her thoughts. An identical girl dressed in identical clothes slouched across the mirror opposite her, eyes bleary and bloodshot, hair stringy and soaked, and clothes ragged and stained. Yang tried to ignore how shitty that girl looked right now, _Gods if anyone came in..._ well, it would be interesting that's for sure.

The spotted-gray stall door yawned open as her gym bag plopped behind her. Her limbs felt hollow, and it was a war whenever she tried to move them. The shower provided good motivation thoug Water, chilling and hard, pricked at her skin, it had to be only a few degrees above freezing.

It felt incredible.

Her head met the wall and she sighed, letting the torrent wash away her day and freeze it on the on the floor below. It...it had been a long one. It started off with classes that began so early it had to be some sort of war crime. All she remembered from that part of the day was a deep voice and facial hair that looked more like a Geist possessing a watermelon-man than an actual human. Then there had been slop - sorry - _lunch._ You'd think a Huntsman Academy would have all the time in the world to learn how to make a _tasty_ bulk-up meal.

You'd be wrong apparently.

History with Oobleck followed lunch, but calling that a blur didn't do the man justice. It was an unbroken laser of information beamed directly into, and then right back out of, her head. She'd bolted to the gym as soon as she could, and been there ever since, per her usual routine. To top it all off, Belladona and Schnee had been at each other's throats. All day. _Again._

Water and air dribbled over her lips and down her chin as she sighed. Team WBY. Wallaby. What a fucking joke. There were about as united cats and dogs, and just as vicious. Schnee and Belladona were constantly - _constantly_ \- fighting, and their clashing arrogance was too much to make them try and make peace. Fuck's sake she just wanted to come back to a calm room and talk, maybe jam out, but it was always like opening the door on a warzone.

She basically self-evicted herself to the gym. Wake up, class, then flee to the weights and sparring rooms till midnight. She didn't regret it one bit. Needed more training anyway.

In the back of her mind she thought she should do something, lock them in a closet and force them to make up or make out, but training always ended up taking priority. _As it should._ How else was she supposed to be the best? And if she wasn't the best, how could she live up to - _stop_.

Blood spurted in her mouth where her teeth slashed her lips. _Don't need to think about that now. Won't change anything._

She did anyway. As per her usual routine.

* * *

It was only when she went to towel off that she noticed them: sodden yellow and gray-block cloth, clinging to her skin like it was a junkies' next fix. She'd forgotten to take off her clothes.

"Goddammit." _Leave them on? No, that would track too much water down the hallways and the janitors don't deserve to pay for my stupidity._ A sigh as she glanced down at the towel in her hands.

Two minutes and an extra "borrowed" towel later and she was out the door wrapped in linens. Water leaked from the sodden part of her gym bag, but otherwise nothing had changed. _Left, left, right_. Metal clunked as she opened a door, _right, straight, left, right,_ another door. Hopefully Schnee and Belladona would be asleep by the time she got back, hell she'd take even one of them being asleep. Having them both awake at this hour was a recipe for disaster. _Having them both awake_ at all _is a recipe for disaster._

But it was late, right? Real late, past midnight - she rounded the corner that led to her dorm -, _and_ they had class tomorrow (she probably shouldn't stay up so late, should she?). Dreaded oak drew closer. They _had_ to be asleep, no way that -

"What is _that_ supposed to mean?!"

"It _means_ exactly what I said it does, Faunus are just naturally prone to criminal behavior!"

"You don't know _anything_ you-"

Yang Xiao-Long closed her eyes and groaned; her head thunking against the door. The room beyond went silent.

 _Shit...well, might as well commit._

Screams ripped their way up her arm as she drove the door open. Silence and cold stares greeted her.

"And where have you been, Xiao-Long?!" The Schnee's left eyebrow was twitching, her already white face a glacier of rage, "and why are you in a towel?"

Purple eyes met ice-blue, _why are both of you awake?!_ "The gym. Showered there." Schnee waited for more, but her only reward was a shrug. _I'm_ _tired_. _Nothing else to say._

"The gym? Really? At _this_ hour? Have you been there all day?" _Yes, yes, yes, and yes._

"Yeah, since classes ended." Violet eyes locked onto her bed like a missile, the mattress singing its siren song of sleep. "Nothin' else to do."

Unconsciously, she made to move towards it, and that made it all the more surprising when a barricade of blue-white and blood red sprang up before her with frozen eyes. " _Nothing_ else to do?!" it shrieked, practically vibrating with anger, "What about schoolwork?! What about dinner?! What about _team_ \- " Yang's eyes flicked to Belladona, " _\- practice_ scheduled for 4pm!?"

Yang sniggered, the towel around her hair trembling, but, in her defense, that really was a laughable idea.

It seemed Weiss didn't feel the same. "What are _you_ laughing at?! You do know how essential it is that we fight _as a team,_ right?! Team training is vital to not only our survival, but the people we're protecting, or are you just too wrapped up in your calisthenics and towels to think about why we came to Beacon?"

Red tinted the room. "I know why I'm here, Princess," Yang's shoulder barrelled through the Schnee, "and it's not to listen to you two tear each other's throats out every second of every day." Her fingers ripped into the towel around her head, wrenching it off without a second thought.

"You're _here_ to become a huntress, same as me. Same as - " Schnee paused, " - as Belladona. It's the _only_ reason anyone would come to Beacon in the first place -"

"And you think you're doing a good job of that?" Belladona scoffed, "You, who only wants to defend _humans_?"

"I defend people worth defending, Belladona, and Faunus qualify as neither."

Yang could _hear_ the ravenette's muscles go rigid.

"You…you pampered, ignorant, spoiled _brat_ ," Yang didn't need to be facing her to know Belladona's teeth were gnashing. "You have no right to speak about Faunus like that after what your family has done!"

The floor shook as the diminutive heiress rounded on her partner. "No right?! _No right?!_ Do you have any idea what my family - "

 _Why couldn't they stop?_

" - has been through?! Because of _them_ , because of Faunus?!"

 _It's late. I'm sore. I can't think._

"What _you've_ been through?! What about the hundreds of Faunus workers -"

 _I_ just _want to sleep. Shut up._

" - that die _per year_ in the deplorable conditions that your family forces them into?!"

Her fists clenched, and her teeth ground together. _Shut. Up._

" _Forces_ them? My family does no such thing! They are simply not qualified for any position outside manual -"

The world flashed red, and a torrent of sodden, golden hair snapped around like a whip. " _Shut. Up! Shut up!_ Both of you just _shut up!"_

The girls before her went stock still.

"You've done nothing but argue and berate each other for the two weeks that we've been here! I can't come back to _my own room_ because you two are always guaranteed to be screaming at each other!" Their eyes drifted to the wall, _good._ "I'm sick of it, if you want to fucking fight, then go somewhere else because _I_ am going to sleep!"

Silence. Blissful, beautiful silence.

Water sprinkled across the floor as she turned back towards the tousled mess of her mattress and trudged towards it. It was easy to scream at someone, easy to yell. It was so much harder to walk when your body wanted to do anything but. She collapsed onto the bed as soon as she could, her hair leaving streaks of liquid across the wall above her. The sheets, the relief of the mattress, the pillow...

It was honestly better than an orgasm.

She closed her eyes, and even though the lights were still on, her towel still clung to her, and Belladona and Schnee still stood nearby, Yang Xiao-Long went out like a light.

* * *

She was chasing...something, she wasn't quite sure what, but they were in a forest of blackened trees. She could only catch glimpses of it, a flick of crimson fabric in a frame of dead wood, tufts of black hair that stuck out like spikes, whiteness, pure and shining, flickering over a hill.

She didn't know who they were - _what_ \- they were, but…

But without them she'd be alone.

Her breathing came in quick, shallow gasps. _No, no, no please. Please don't leave me here._

"Come back!" The voice was too young to be hers, wasn't it? Short legs dug into the ground, dust bunnies trailing up into the sky where she stepped. "Please," _please please please please._

"Don't leave me," she almost sobbed.

White on black and a flash of red ahead as she weaved between towers of burnt bark, pigtails flapping. Wood, gnarled and groaning, clutched at her legs as she ran, tripping and scratching and bleeding.

"Come back!" _come back, come back come back come back COME BACK_

 _DON'T LEAVE ME._

 _Why?_ Rustled the leaves. _Why?_ spoke the ash. _Why why why why why_

"I don't want to be alone..." She wailed, something spindly dripping from her eyes. "I don't want to be...please," a gasp, "please don't leave me."

Silence thick as a steel beam and just as heavy was her answer. Not a thing moved, save for the dripping of tears off her face. The craters they left in the dust were deep, blackened things. Why? Why was she so _weak_? She hated it. Hated the helplessness. Hated the people who left her.

Heat licked down her back.

 _Worthless_ , a voice whispered, _alone, crying in the woods. Pathetic._

More drip-drops, more craters. The tree husks crept closer.

 _This is how you honor her? Sobbing in the woods?_

"Shut up."

 _Some sister you are, some Huntress._

Teeth turned to dust in her mouth, "shut up."

Thick, wet ash slithered up her arms, slicing her skin with bits of rock masked in the grey.

 _All alone. All alone._

"Shut. _Up!"_ Fire spurted from her mouth, dancing along her skin, embracing her in a massive, golden inferno.

It burned, and her tears kept flowing.

* * *

The morning light against her eyelids was somehow both welcome and fiercely hated at the same time. On the one hand it saved her from a nightmare, on the other it forced her to actually be awake. Cloth and blankets filled her mouth, all of them soaked in drool. They actually didn't taste that bad really.

Her stomach growled, _and speaking of taste…_

Arms rattled as they forced her upright on the bed, quick, pained breaths escaping her mouth. She'd regained some of the feeling in her arms since last night, and wasn't that a curse. From hollow to aching like a hangover in a matter of hours. Deep down she knew that that was a good sign, a sign of progress, but right now she couldn't find it in herself to care.

Glass and stone glimmered with the soft golden light of morning outside the window, and inside each bed was the same, their covers meticulously made. _Huh,_ she gave the room a quick scan, _wonder where_ \- "oh, _shit!"_ Righty snapped out to her bedside table, the sore muscles almost convulsing as they latched onto her scroll.

The background was an ancient one, a scan of one of the few photos she'd managed to rescue from the cabin back on Patch. It was stained, faded, and frayed, but the focus was still clear: her and Ruby standing atop a prone Taiyang. Dad's face was towards the camera, and was pulling the most ridiculous death mask, complete with outstretched tongue and warped grimace of laughter. A young Ruby sat astride Yang's shoulders, her face caught mid-snort, arm outstretched and pointing off camera.

Yang smiled, a fleeting thing dashed by the flashing numbers above the scene: 9:45am.

"Fuck!" The covers were tossed to the side, along with her balance, and she kissed the floor way before it had even bought her dinner. It took two seconds to writhe out of her prison, and sixty more as she yanked open the drawers and threw on whatever she first touched with the vague hope it would resemble Beacon's uniform.

The door to room 314 slammed open, handle _maybe_ denting the wall where it struck, and a blur of sloppily buttoned red and brown tore down the hallway, a messy mane of gold streaking behind it. _Left, left, right,_ she barged through another door, _I swear I set the alarm..._ right, left, right, right.

Steel touched her fingers as she wrapped the handle of Professor Port's door in one hand, while her shoulder banged against the now open portal. _Maybe too loud, maybe too much, but who cares?_ She didn't mind the embarrassment, didn't really care what anyone here thought of her, _not here to make friends after all._

The muscles in her face twisted into a premade scowl, eyes already prepped and ready to glare any snickerers down. Maybe punch them too, her mood was definitely foul enough.

It was all for nought though, because the room she walked into was barren. Not a student in sight. "Uh," her hand dug around inside her bra, and removed her sweat stained scroll with a yank. _Tuesday, 9:51am_. "Ah, son of a…" she spun on her heel, calves pleading for rest as she sprinted down the hallway and towards the main combat arena where Professor Goodwitch was sure to tear into her.

Muffled words and shouts trickled down the hallway, growing louder with each step. _9:54am._ "Dammit, dammit, dammit," she muttered in between breaths, strides shortening as she neared the opening to the arena. The shouts peaked and blended with applause (and a few boo's) as she drew closer, her pace slowing from a sprint to a jog.

Sadly though, by the time the crack of her footsteps reverberated around the room, it was the only sound left. No shouts, applause, or boos to camouflage it.

"Miss Xiao-Long, how nice of you to join us." Glynda Goodwitch, Deputy of Beacon drawled. _Drawled._ A few snickers and shit-eating grins followed. Yang just kept her eyes locked on Professor Goodwitch. Neither blonde was fazed.

"You're just in time for your match, please fetch your weapons from your combat locker if you would, and make it prompt, your opponent must almost be done with hers." Even though she was technically late, a self-satisfied smile sprouted on her lips at the timing.

Yang's eyes gouged the crowd as she marched down the stands, seeking out the laughers and the grinners, almost all of which pointedly avoided her gaze. There were two pair that didn't though, one amber, and one glacier blue. Sat on opposite sides of the arena from each other, both colors locked on her, following her every clanging step with...satisfaction? Her anger only made her move faster, the steel pleading in submission.

The combat lockers were linked directly to the arena floor by a set of steel double doors at least an inch thick. They opened without noise or complaint to reveal row after row of lockers that branched in all directions. Hers was 347, in the back left corner of it all if her memories could be trusted. Small clanks, clacks, and snaps echoed from her right, but her legs continued to her locker. _Not here to make friends._

The steel inside clicked, automatically unlocking when it registered her scroll closeby. Ember Vindicta was nestled inside, the dulled yellow steel and burning red of her shells clashing in the morning light. They sung as she slipped them on, the spikes along the knuckles giggling in anticipation. Her lips twisted into a brutal smile, Dad called it her "fightin' grin." He wasn't far off. _This morning is about to get a whole lot better._

Hinges cried out as she tortured them, throwing the double doors open to reveal lilac eyes tinged with red. There were two women on the raised dias of the arena, one substantially older than the other, but both cut imposing figures in the lighting.

Yang's grin only grew wider.

"Ah, there you are Miss Xiao-Long," the teacher gestured to the woman on her right, garbed in red and gold. "Your opponent will be Pyrrha Nikos. Miss Nikos, your opponent will be Yang Xiao-Long" Yang nodded, her smile still in place as she stepped into position opposite the girl. _Nikos huh? Nice._ She knew of her of course, The Invincible Girl, how could any aspiring hunter _not_ know her?

Granted, tournaments had never been her thing, but Dad often left them on at home for background noise or to comfort Zwei when they were both gone. About half of them contained Nikos, and those that didn't always seemed to think that the ultimate goal for any fighter was to go one on one with her. It would make for a damn fun fight. Maybe even chip away at that inevitable ego.

"Pleased to meet you," Nikos said, a subtle, fake smile plastered to her face as one gloved hand outstretched towards Yang. She cracked her knuckles, relishing the familiar hiss and clank of the steel on her arms.

"Yeah. Same." A nod at the redhead (Which seemed too 'lax a term, her hair was less 'red' than it was a bloody crimson, the same color as the sash wrapped around her waist.) "Nice getup."

Nikos' head shifted downwards defensively, like she almost expected Yang to flick her nose and spout 'made ya look!' She meant it though, her getup did look good; it had a nice mix of protection and sexiness. Who the hell fought in heels though? Emerald eyes attempted to pry into Yang's mind, studying every muscle in her face. Hesitation. "Thank you?" Her voice was calm yet uncertain, "I like your...shirt?" _What shirt am I wearing again?_ Her attention drifted down towards the wrinkled, sweat stained, and crumpled collared shirt. _Oh. Whose even is this?_

"Don't lie to my face like that, Nikos." The woman across from her at least had the courtesy to look ashamed.

"Students ready?" Prof. Goodwitch gave them both a glare, (Or maybe that was just how she looked at people all the time? Who could tell with that woman.) her eyes rising over the rim of her glasses like emerald waves buffeted by a hurricane.

Yang nodded, the grin drowning her face. "Yeah."

Meanwhile Nikos looked like her mom had slapped her hand out of the cookie jar right before dinner. "Yes ma'am." Her voice was hilariously stiff. To Nikos' credit though she didn't let it get to her, her muscles relaxing as she fell into a fighting stance: shield held comfortably before her, and spear leveled straight at Yang's chest, still as a cemetery in winter.

Adrenaline and aura screamed down Yang's veins like a gale made of fireworks, filling her mind to the brim with information as her senses seemed to open up for the first time today. All traces of soreness and fatigue melted away, replaced by that familiar pre-combat high. Her arms fell casually into place before her as she bobbed back and forth on her feet, Ember Vindicta singing as it expanded along her arms, locked and loaded.

Yang was aware of Prof Goodwitch click-clacking to the side of the arena, followed by a flickering blue light enveloping the world around them, but all her focus was on the girl before her. Nikos' breathing looked to almost stop completely, while Yang's was slow but deep.

 _Forward,_ her weight obeyed, _back._

 _Forward, back._

 _Forward -_ Nikos exhaled - _back._

 _Forward -_ the crack of a whip filled the air, "Begin!"

Yang lunged forward, smile manic. A flash of red and gold on her left, and her arm moved vertical. Metal screeched and sparks danced on her face as the spear deflected across her gauntlet. She almost giggled from sheer joy, but Nikos put a stop to that.

The weaponized razor hummed as it rocketed up at unnatural, almost impossible speeds, before slamming back down with a gunshot.

It cut across her sternum, flashing yellow as it met her aura, and Yang twisted. Not a second too soon. Another gunshot from the butt of Nikos' rifle had it impale the air where her stomach had been.

Stained and spoiled button-up cloth immediately coiled around the metal shaft like a snake. Two shotgun blasts from her left gauntlet followed it up as quick as you could blink, but both only grazed Nikos' leg instead of nailing her thigh like they should've. _How? She didn't move._

The immobilized spear shifted in her grip, and Yang immediately twisted her aim and shot a high explosive shell to the far left, twirling with the recoil. The spear was wrenched from Nikos' grasp, and Yang's smile grew even more with the roundhouse kick she delivered with the inertia.

Leather doesn't ring like metal, it thuds, a deep throbbing sound that vibrates through your body, so the impact against the bronze shield was somewhat disappointing sound wise. The way that Nikos was sent sliding a few feet across the arena on her soles made up for that though.

Tile cracked from the force of the twin explosive shells that sent her careening towards the scarlet woman with a howl. Emerald eyes widened ever so slightly, flitting from the barreling blonde to her spear off to the right.

The air tore when her left hand met Nikos' shield, and that hid the missile of flesh and steel that ripped around the bronze's flank and straight towards her face.

She smiled, then frowned just as quickly. The blow that should've - _absolutely should've -_ connected with Nikos' chest merely grazed her corset. She could _feel_ the buzz of static from the champion's body crackle across her skin.

 _How the fuck-_

Bronze slammed into her nose and threw her to the left. Breath exploded from her mouth when her spine cracked against the tile. _I can't breathe._ One hand dug into the floor, _I can't breathe._

Something slammed into her temple, ringing through her brain as gold swirled and sliced before her. _Slam slam_ , two shield bashes on her gut followed by four shots across her arms. Her arms raised instinctively in an X to block her skull, but, just as fast, steel slipped into the gut that they exposed. Shift down, and get a cut across her brow, shift up and get stabbed in the sternum. Slices clashed against her aura in yellow trails that decorated her like lights on a Christmas tree.

 _Slam slice -_

Panic welled in her gut.

- _Slice slice slam slice -_

Pain flooded the panic.

 _-Kick slice slice crack kick -_

Rage swallowed them both.

- _Slam slam slam -_

It was a deep, burning thing that tore through her mind and body. Every slice, every slam, every kick, every shot fed it. Made it stronger.

Made _her_ stronger.

Everything turned red, and the world exploded. Raging yellow flames erupted from her form, throwing the silhouette above her off balance and sending a shadowy lance screaming into the ground beside her left ear.

One hand shot forth, wreathed in flame and fueled by rage, it slammed into the silhouette, and she relished in the collision of flesh on flesh and the cry of pain. Another hand followed it up, throwing an uppercut that caught the form - _when did i stand up -_ before her in the jaw. A force tugged at her limbs, but it could not stop her or the shotgun shell to the chin that followed a second after.

 _Right hook, right hook, left jab, left uppercut, right jab, knee, shot-shot-right hook, left hook-shot, right jab-shot_ \- something slammed against her shoulder, and again against her forearm, - _left hook-shot, kick, kick, right uppercut-shot_ \- but it only fed her fire.

Not every hit roused a cry of pain, not every shot met flesh, but they didn't need to. She was gonna make this person - whoever they were - _pay_. And she was going to enjoy every second of it.

The silhouette tried to back off, leaping backwards with its shield raised, but Yang pounced on it with a roar, plowing straight through the blows and shots that it threw at her. A burning Ember Vindicta came around on the left, followed promptly by an axe kick-uppercut. Both hammered against the things shield, a dull, empty sound compared to the roar of her fire. _This_ fucking _shield_.

It had to go.

Another hook-shot combo was blocked on the right by the bronze, but Yang only grinned a golden, predatory smile. Her other hand latched onto the side, spurning a gasp from the silhouette before her. Her fingers wrapped around the metal and she slammed it again and again back at the form that used to own it. Twin emerald lights were all she could make it out in the fire, they were wide, yet narrowed, shocked yet determined.

A stern voice nipped at her ears, but it was distant, distorted.

Yang growled.

Biceps screamed and metal screeched (or was that her?) as she twisted and tore the shield away from its previous owner, hurling it to the side like a frisbee. Teeth and blood split her face in a victorious smile, and she charged straight into the form before her, bringing them both to the searing tile floor. One hand locked around the silhouette's hair and slammed its head down, the other raised and whirred as a new round was chambered.

Her grin was vicious, ecstatic. She was ready to blow those emerald lights straight out -

" _Enough!"_ A force gripped her body, and she froze. It took a second or ten, her teeth gnashing in a desperate attempt to rip apart whatever held her captive, but, slowly, she ceased. The world came back into focus, the yellow flames suffocated with her anger, and the red haze faded to a steady drip-drip of blood that ran over her eyebrow.

She blinked, blood got in her eye, and she blinked again.

There was a girl below her, emerald eyes wide and flitting with that post-adrenaline crash that she knew so well. She had crimson hair that was pulled back in what must've once been an impeccable ponytail, but now was a mess. Her mouth moved, a glob of blood dripping out, but Yang couldn't hear what she said.

Her eyes flicked down to the rest of the girl's body, over leather and bronze and - _oh._

There was a spear, its point steaming and red, held just beneath her throat.

"Shit."

"Miss Xiao-Long -" Yang winced "- Miss Nikos -" _Nikos?_ "- What on Remnant were you both thinking!?"

Yang was a fish out of water, her mouth uselessly flopping open and closed. The girl below her - _Nikos, Pyrrha Nikos_ \- wasn't much better.

"I take it back," the towering woman said, her hand slicing through the air, "It is clear to me that neither of you were thinking at all. Not only did you both ignore my call to cease the fight, both of you were you so caught up in your competition and bloodlust that you nearly killed each other." Both girls eyes snapped to their weapons, and then to the floor.

"Miss Nikos," the girl below her flinched, "you were obsessed and arrogant, so focused on winning that you not only ignored _me_ , but also your own aura levels and sparring safety procedures. I expected better of you."

Those forest-green fires rounded on Yang, "and _you_ Miss Xiao-Long, where to even _begin_? An absolutely reckless disregard for your life _and_ your classmate's, breaking basic sparring safety procedures, ignoring your aura, ignoring _me_ , and letting emotion rule you in a combat situation. Did you even know who you were fighting?" Lilac eyes drifted shut, "did you even _care?_ "

She didn't respond.

"I thought as much; I will be seeing you after class is over, and I expect _both of you_ to report to detention later. Return to your seats, and leave your weapons here with me."

The force dissipated, and her shoulders instantly sagged.

* * *

Yang threw another pebble over the Beacon cliffs. It bounced twice off the rock face below before vanishing into the carpet of leaves lining the ground. Her hand scrabbled blindly to her right for another.

She didn't even glance at the thing before she tossed it. _Way to go, Yang._ Her grimace turned even more sour. _Did a bang up job of making the day better._

Goodwitch had ripped her apart. Verbally of course, but she almost wished it had been physical. She deserved it all. Apparently she'd been lucky not to be expelled.

Her eyes drifted shut as she sighed, arms splaying out behind her. Almost nobody had met her eyes all day after that display with Nikos, but whether that was fear, disgust, or something else entirely she didn't know.

There were exceptions though, three to be exact. One pair aqua, the next glacier blue, and the final a deep amber. The aqua belonged to a short redhead whose name she didn't know. Always next to Nikos though, so probably a teammate. A teammate that wanted to break her if the looks had been any indication. There was a part of her that hoped the redhead would pop up behind her, if only so that she could have someone to take out her...state on.

The grass behind her just waved gently in the evening breeze. Yang sighed again.

Schnee and Belladona had been...different. She'd only gone to their room to grab her clothes and change, but the silence, looks, and distance didn't bode well for the health of their team. They were upset with her, embarrassed by her, and maybe a little bit fearful too. It was hard to blame them.

That said, she'd still find a way, and not just because she was certain that one of them must've silenced her alarm in the morning for some sort of petty revenge.

Yang growled at everything, _especially_ her teammates. _Not heading back there tonight,_ but then where to sleep? She blinked, thoughts rummaging through dusty old memories of possible friends to crash with.

Soft gold and harsh silver glistened far away against the burning orange and pink sky of the setting sun. The green of the forest below was stained with the color of sunset and city, and she had an idea.

The muscles in her legs obeyed achily, bringing up to stand, and then to walk. A night out on the town would be good. Help clear her head. Might grab a hotel room, or maybe just go home with someone, whichever worked.

Yellow hair glistened and bounced as she trudged across the green and towards the Bullhead docks.

Tonight could be a nice break.

* * *

Ruby Rose probably shouldn't be running. She probably shouldn't have eaten the last bag of Dusty's Mesquite BBQ flavored chips. She probably shouldn't have tried to spar while wounded yesterday. She probably shouldn't have, but she did, and she was. A tune vibrated up her throat and off her lips as she ran, weaving in between lumps of glass twisted into usable objects.

It was hard not to watch the colors of her outfit twirl inside them, oh so very hard, but the threat of upsetting the woman who'd taken her in by breaking something…

Well, that did the trick alright.

"Speaking of which," she mumbled in between the wind, "where is Cinder?"

The woman hadn't been in her 'room' (though Ruby had a sneaking suspicion that it was more of her lounge which totally, _absolutely_ was not validated by a possible break-in), hadn't been on the sparring floor, hadn't been with Emerald (who seemed somewhat disappointed at that), and hadn't been in the gym. Ruby's feet slammed against the wall as she launched herself over to the arena in a swirl of petals. "So wheeere are you?"

The sparring arena was empty, as it had been twenty minutes ago.

 _Hmmm._

She took a deep breath.

"Mercury!"

The sound hit the edge of the complex and died, soaked into the walls, but she thought it might have been enough. One second passed, then two. She took another breath.

"What?" Came the reply, and she couldn't help but smile as she morphed into a missile.

Mercury Black was lounging in the kitchen, munching on a bag of chips. 'Was' being the keyword there, as the bag of chips was now in the hands of a certain rose sitting upon the counter. "Ruby," he warned, his voice rigid and his eyes locked on the snack.

Ruby's eyes went wide and her lower lip jutted out in her damn near perfected 'Pout of Innocence' or 'Pinnocence.' Okay, so the name was still a work in progress, but it could still be effective dammit! "What?"

"Give me the chips. Now."

"These chips? You can't mean these, I just got them from the pantry."

Gray eyes narrowed. "I will kill you," his face was deadpan, and his voice matter-of-fact.

Silver eyes gleamed, her smile growing wider. "Is that a challenge, Mister Mercury?"

The boy (man? Who knew?) just shrugged, eyes gyroscopically locked on the bag in her hands. "Just a fact of life, Thorn," he smirked, "I _am_ much better than you after all."

Ruby scoffed and snorted, scorted, leaning back with a wide grin. "In your dreams, Grey-boy." a quick toss with an honest smile and the bag was sailing through the air, "you're arrogant, y'know that?"

Mercury Black shrugged and moved his mouth in what could've been words if his lips weren't dripping with crumbs. The brunette chuckled, before her original purpose - and excitement - trounced it.

"Have you seen Cinder?"

The sounds of crinkling plastic, "not -" _crunch_ "- recently, no. Probably out on the town or in a meeting. Why?"

Ruby grinned from ear to ear as she shuffled to the edge of the counter, pride spilling over from her eyes. "Because I'm ready for my first assignment."

* * *

 **A/N: Hey y'all! So, long story as to why I haven't updated in awhile. Everything from finding a job, to relationship bumps, to finding out I have depression. Soooooo that's been fun, but I'm not trying to push away any concern when I say that things are much better now, trust me, I wouldn't be able to write if things were still going poorly. Take that for what you will.**

 **This chapter was tricky, the more I wrote the first chapters the more I got used to how Ruby would react, act, and think as she is now, but Yang is a character I had never really written that much in the first place so throwing these wrenches in her background has made things even more difficult to really nail how I think she would be and act. Please tell me how y'all think I did on that front; any feedback is good feedback, and I don't want to continuously do something wrong if it can be improved.**

 **It's kind of hard honestly, writing all this slow buildup stuff and touring back through season one, I have some big plans for altering seasons two and on, and some big new stuff for the timeline equivalent of season four, but to do that I have to slog through one. I'm gonna try and get through it as quickly as possible, but we'll see.**

 **In terms of other stories, I am working on a time-travel fic that I think will end up being really sweet (as in romantic and shit), so that'll be fun. Also working on a Dark Souls/RWBY crossover oneshot that might evolve into a full story depending on how things go. Also been thinking about an Overwatch crossover plot, but it's still doing nothing but planning in my brain right now.**

 **On another note, I realize that Weiss has sort of been consistently a, well, a bitch for lack of a better term, and that really isn't me trying to flame her. Weiss is probably my favorite of the four main girls, and there are so many reasons for that. That said, her behavior at the beginning of Volume One is...less than stellar. I'm not trying to paint her in a cruel light or make her seem worse than she might be just because I hate her or anything. Just wanted to be clear about that.**

 **Stay safe out there y'all, and always remember to seek happiness wherever you can.**


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